Strategy for media growth in the era of super smart technology

 ■ Strategy for media growth in the era of super smart technology

I have come to talk about the integration of communications and broadcasting for the first time in two years, after being invited by the Investment WG under the Council for Regulatory Reform.

As the meeting will not be open to the public, we will take notes to the extent they do not exceed the content briefed by the secretariat to reporters after the WG. 

After the previous discussion, the Broadcast Act was revised, and NHK simultaneous broadcasting started. It was a great achievement and great progress. However, 28 years after the phrase, joining communications and broadcasting was born, NHK simultaneous broadcasting was still 12 years behind the BBC.

The legal system for communications and broadcasting was drastically revised in 2011, and the judicial system was almost done with handling it, with the remaining task being NHK simultaneous distribution.

Ten years after the revision of the law, with the exception of terrestrial digital broadcasting, broadcasting has not changed, but communication has grown, and the gap has widened to the extent that all key stations have been taken over because of NTT's gains from operations.

American giants including Netflix have come to Japan, and soon there will be a strong influx of Chinese capital. At the same time, we are approaching the age of AI and data. Our current mission is to think about broadcasting among such things. 

A year ago, when revising the Broadcast Act, the case of the United Kingdom was brought up by the Diet. The BBC and commercial broadcasting are united, with a clear attitude for confronting Netflix and Amazon. We are taking measures on three things, 1. broadcasting platform; 2. IP cloud; and 3. data usage.

Now, the Broadcast Act has stipulated that there is an obligation for cooperation between NHK and commercial broadcasting. We are taking notice of this. Is it possible to create this 3-piece set of joint platform, IP cloud, and data usage, through the collaboration of NHK with commercial broadcasting? One point is not the small matter of a 2.5% reception fee that is a little under ¥20 billion, but whether such infrastructure can be created on a scale of several hundred billion yen.

Broadcasting is ¥4 trillion. Communication is ¥15 trillion. When we talk about merging, we tend to look at how they intersect and their common factors, but how do we increase the common multiple? We should draw up a strategy for growth, with an eye on the overall market. Is it necessary to reconsider foreign capital restrictions on the broadcasting industry? Is it still necessary to regulate the decentralization of mass media, and NTT's media investment regulations? These are the kinds of new points at issue.

The next thing that remains is copyright. As the merging of communication and broadcasting progresses, there is also the point of the division of communication and broadcasting under the Copyright Act becoming a bottleneck. We have been raising the issue for about 20 years, but the problem is that the Japanese system has the Galapagos effect, which hinders online distribution.

What I mean to say is that there are no particular systematic issues (except for copyright), but rather the strategies and vision of the private sector and business, including TV stations, are being questioned. How do we face the US-China offensive and technology shifts? I want to ask this to media companies, not the government.