Commercial broadcast​s aimed at Tokyo 2020

 The internet digital
seminar of the National Association of Commercial Broadcasters in Japan. It’s a
place where key and local commercial broadcasting stations participate
and polish internet and
digital compatibility. I
serve as
the chairman. I will introduce the preface I wrote when summarizing the
report.

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Currently, the “review board concerning the likes of the promotion of the creation and distribution of broadcasting content” is established at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the focus is broadcasting and simultaneous internet transmission. Twenty five years have passsed since the (former) Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications and the telecommunications council of 1992, when policy statements of combining transmission and broadcasting started, and it demonstrates the fact that the relationship between broadcasting and the internet has matured.  

At the intellectual property headquarters where I serve as chairman, a meeting was held the other day focusing on the promotion of movies, and the subject was the fact that "Hibana," which Yoshimoto Kogyo produced with Netflix, was distributed to 190 countries, and then broadcast on NHK’s terrestrial broadcast signal.

"Film" grade content made with funds from American IT companys is delivered via the "net," and this becomes a "broadcast" program. Conventional business models, communication and broadcasting contexts, and production methods are already covered. The scene has changed completely.

At the beginning of last year's report, I summarized that broadcasters have started taking diverse routes based on their own visions. Each company is unleashing various strategies based on their intentions, including starting “Tver,” an official commercial broadcasting portal, working together with social services, live distribution, providing content to platforms, Vlow multimedia broadcasting, and initiating “More TV.”

In this year's report, it seems that such diverse routes have become established, and that the business is heading towards the crucial moment. They are inlaid with initiatives by each station concerning internet distribution and its business model. I would like this reality to be affirmed.

Well, last year, I pointed out two things to keep in mind.

One is that it’s a situation of re-questioning "TV." This means that programs will be able to be viewed in any area of ​​the world, even on smartphones and tablets, and we will enter the so-called field of "all IP."

Another thing is the appearance of the world beyond smart, the stage we should call “post-smart.”

It’s a situation represented by IoT and AI.

In the past year, these have already quickly entered the full-scale stage. Video services for smartphones, including AbemaTV, have become widespread, and for the younger generation, video is rapidly moving toward "smart first." The government has also positioned the development of AI and IoT as an important issue of growth strategy, and is placing emphasis on spreading these new technologies, referred to as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, or Society 5.0.

These big waves striking the broadcasting world will be faster than the combination of telecommunications and broadcasting 25 years ago. That’s because the digital infrastructure is already in place.

In this project, we held discussions with guests six times.

There were two points which shocked me. Firstly, LINE LIVE reported that "Young users only watch videos on vertical screens." Will videos shift from horizontal to vertical with the shift to smartphone-first? If so, how should we make video for TV, which in our horizontal culture has been 3:4 or 9:16?

Won’t this become a major theme or surpassing the compatibility with 4K and 8K?

The other point is a report that the “All IP” movement has actually started in the United States. This means that the entire broadcasting system will be switched over to an internet cloud. It means that the combination of telecommunications and broadcasting, which 25 years ago “might happen eventually,” has reached a crucial moment, and the next “might happen eventually” is already imminently approaching. Naturally smartphone-first and 4K8K, but also new technologies including All IP, VR and AR, and IoT and AI will settle their connections with broadcasting, and Japan will become a showcase for the world.