W Legends Talk for 120 Minutes – Miyoko Kikkawa and Itiro Furudate “Honne no TV & Announcer Theory

Mr. Kikkawa is a man of the times, and it is a great thing to be able to say things clearly. I can’t do it.

Mr. Furudate is a genius who lives his life with his antenna in all directions.

Itiro Furudate (69, formerly of TV Asahi) and Miyoko Yoshikawa (69, formerly of TBS), both freelance announcers, praised each other as soon as they saw each other. The two legends talk about the changing media and the past and present of announcing. –.

Yoshikawa: “Live broadcasts show how good announcers are.
Furudate: “I want to die in the middle of ‘Talking Blues.

Yoshikawa: We first met at the Kokugikan in 1981, right, when I went there as a reporter to cover the pro-wrestling boom for TBS’s “News Special,” and I greeted Furudate-san, who was in charge of the live broadcast.

Furudate That’s right. At ringside, I said to him, “We are in the same class, aren’t we? I said something like, “We are in the same class, aren’t we? I remember how happy I was that he came to interview me. It was a long time ago.

Yoshikawa: Since then, I have been supporting Mr. Furudate as a fan from the shadows. As the successor to Hiroshi Kume (79) as the anchor of “News Station,” I thought you must be under a lot of pressure.

Furudate I was worried about my going to the news field as a sports commentator, and I was also worried about succeeding Mr. Kume, who is a senior newscaster. …… I consider Mr. Yoshikawa, who cares so much about me, to be like a mother (laughs).

Yoshikawa: Mr. Furudate was in charge of “News Station” for a long time, from 2004 to 2004, and I am sure there were viewers who complained about every single word and move he made. So, Mr. Furudate, you must have been under a lot of stress.

Furudate: I used to work as a play-by-play announcer for professional wrestling and F1, so I was looked at by both the viewers and the people around me as “You’re a sports play-by-play announcer, but you’re doing news reporting. It was quite hurtful, but now I think it was a good experience. Once I came to realize that being a news anchor is a position in which it is natural to be slandered, I was able to relax in a good way. Mr. Kume, you dared to make a show that was so repulsive, didn’t you?

Yoshikawa: That’s right. I was a reporter for a program called “Saturday Wide Radio TOKYO” on TBS Radio, of which Mr. Kume was the MC, and he used to say, “Those who criticize us are the ones who listen to and check our programs seriously, in other words, they are avid listeners. He also said that the many anti-critics are in fact many times the number of fans. That made sense to me.

Kudate Mr. Kume was very good at getting around, wasn’t he? I had my fair share of difficulties, but isn’t it the same for you, Mr. Yoshikawa?

Yoshikawa: When I was a young man, broadcasting stations were completely male-dominated. When I was selected as a news anchor, I always felt people looking at me as if they were testing me, asking “What can a woman do?” There was a strict policy of not letting anyone read the news without experience as a news reporter. I was in a cold sweat when I joined the National Diet Press Club and was suddenly thrown out on my own to cover the news. On my way back to the press room, I got lost in the Diet building and was confused. I became a Ryutaro fan (laughs).

Furudate He must have been trained hard, as he was thrown offshore and had to learn to swim on his own.

Earn with your feet and communicate with your skills

Yoshikawa: I feel that today’s announcers are primarily concerned with “becoming popular” and “looking pretty,” and their work as communicators has become a secondary concern. Even on my days off, when an election was approaching, I would go to the constituency with my own money to cover the election.

Furudate It is really important to earn money with your feet.’ During the Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008, I made a private visit to a town factory in Tokyo. I drove around by myself, going from door to door, asking them if I could talk to them. There were friends of people who had lost their jobs due to the recession, managers who were working on weekends to somehow turn things around, angry people who said, “I won’t talk to you,” and craftsmen who told me their plight, “I’ll talk to you because you know what’s going on. As I listened to the stories of various people, I was surprised at my own powerlessness.
On such a return trip home, at dusk, along the river in Rokugo, Ota-ku, I cried as I watched airplanes taking off and landing at Haneda Airport. I was stunned to realize how weak I was without a microphone, and how blue I was after 50 years of age. Mr. Yoshikawa, you had such an experience 30 years ago, didn’t you?

Yoshikawa: It is also essential to have the skill to convey the information you have earned with your feet. When I was not working, I practiced and studied reading in a training room about 3 tatami mats in size at the back of the announcements room. If a senior staff member was reading the news, I would say, “Let me study,” and go to the studio.

Furudate Nowadays, information programs are just reading from a big board, peeling off the flaps, and repeating the reading aloud again, so you never get to report in your own words. This reduces the amount of thinking and speaking for oneself. For young announcers today, that is the norm, and they have come to think that reading boards and manuscripts is announcing and moderating. Once you get into that situation, you can’t get out of it. That’s why I feel sorry for them. I don’t even get to go on live on-the-spot broadcasts.

Yoshikawa: You can tell how good they are by whether or not they can do live broadcasts. You need both the technical part of communicating and the basic knowledge of reading books and newspapers and studying on a regular basis. There are very few people who can do this.

Furudate In that sense, I think the era of the “real male announcer” ended with Shinichiro Azumi (50). Azumi is truly amazing. He teases people from an angle, makes fun of them, and speaks earnestly. It is amazing that she can put her heart into it, or not, with such freedom. He is also an excellent radio broadcaster. And at a time when it is common for people to quit their jobs at the station and go freelance, he stayed on. Azumi is now treated as an executive, and she is aiming for the position of the first president in the announcer world (laughs).

Yoshikawa: The recent trend is for people to think that going freelance is proof of both ability and popularity.

Furudate Speaking of that, I sincerely appreciate the “ability to be misunderstood” of today’s children. Minami Tanaka (37) and Kasumi Mori (28), formerly of TV Tokyo, are active in a variety of fields, including publishing photobooks of photogravure photos and working as actresses. In our time, we could not have had that kind of boldness. I feel that female announcers are more capable of making mistakes in a positive sense. Male announcers are not able to do that much and are not as interesting.

Yoshikawa: When Minami Tanaka was a station announcer, I think she played up the “image of a female announcer that the director wants. There was a bit of excessive direction in the variety shows she appeared in, and there were voices in the announcing department that said, “Don’t let the bureau announcers do that. But she thought, “I will do what the director expects me to do. I think she could have been an MC, not an actress, since she is also a very talented announcer.

Furudate That’s why it’s amazing that she is now working as an actress. Are there any female announcers that you can appreciate these days?

TV and announcers change.

Yoshikawa: At TBS, I feel comfortable watching Maonko Hibi (30), Reina Minagawa (32), and Erika Yamamoto (30). I can see that these women have the attitude of conveying rather than reading out loud. There are many other announcers who are doing well, but I don’t watch much terrestrial TV these days. I am sorry (laughs).
Television and the world have really changed. Rather than terrestrial news programs, news programs on the Internet, such as Abema, are more interesting because they cover issues that are difficult to cover on terrestrial TV. We are also working together on a unique new graduate job hunting program called “Career Draft,” which connects students and companies on Abema.

Furudate Since both Mr. Yoshikawa and I came from terrestrial broadcasting, we have a strong love for television, but unfortunately we are no longer attached to it.

Yoshikawa: It is impossible to regain the dominance that we had in the past.

Furudate I don’t know how long there will be terrestrial news programs. The shape of station announcing will naturally change as well.

Yoshikawa: I still help train new announcers, but even if I go to the trouble of training them, they end up using freelance announcers or TV personalities as MCs. This has been the case at TBS since my working days. What was the purpose of the rigorous employment examination? There are many announcers who are talented but don’t appear on many programs. TV stations are losing interest in nurturing their own announcers. I wonder how long the station announcers will be needed.

Furudate: Announcers who hone their skills and work hard will naturally find their way to the next stage of their careers. Making your own decisions and making your own efforts is what suits the current times, and diversity. If you remain confined to the station’s announcing room, you are going against the times.

Yoshikawa: People who want to express their own personal opinions rather than communicate as a member of a station can now do so on terrestrial broadcasting or the Internet, or whatever.

Furudate Even the usually serious Mr. Yoshikawa is not so serious about his work! Derekiryoku Times” (Fuji Television Network), in which you are appearing, you are trying to get people to laugh (laughs).

Yoshikawa: That’s because he trusts Teppei Arita (53) and the staff (laughs). From now on, I would like to live for my hobbies, such as jazz, which I love.

Furudate It is good to have hobbies. I don’t have any hobbies, and I’m all about talking, so it’s tough. At my age, the countdown to death has already begun, and of course I am conscious of it. The other day, when I went to Hibiya to see a movie, the lady at the ticket counter said to me without even having to show my ID, “You’re paying for senior citizens! I didn’t even have to show my ID to the lady at the ticket counter, and I was able to enjoy the movie at a reasonable price (laugh). At this rate, I feel old and want to die with the microphone still connected in the middle of “Talking Blues.

Yoshikawa: We are both turning 70 this year, but your spirit of talking until you die is brilliant! You are a true gem of an announcer (laughs).

◆Ichiro Furudate (69) was born in Tokyo in 1954. After graduating from Rikkyo University, he joined TV Asahi in 1977 and was in charge of “World Pro Wrestling” and “Night Hit Studio. From 2004 to ’16, he worked as an anchor for “News Station. Currently, in addition to her TV appearances, she is active in online programs and her own YouTube channel.

Miyoko Kikkawa (69) was born in Kanagawa Prefecture in 1954. After graduating from Waseda University, she joined TBS in 1977 and served as an announcer, commentator, and principal of the TBS announcement school. He also served as the principal of the TBS announcement school, where he taught the next generation of announcers. After retiring in 2002, he has worked as a commentator and lecturer on information programs, as well as on “Zenryoku! Dairiki Times” (Fuji Television Network).

From the April 19, 2024 issue of FRIDAY