From the Yomuiri Shimbun: NHK business plan rejected.

     The committee overseeing NHK decided Tuesday not to approve the public broadcaster's business plan, which includes a proposal to cut the viewing fee by between 50 yen and 100 yen, effectively demanding a bigger cut, committee members said.

     The NHK Management Committee asked the national broadcaster's executive to revise the business plan, saying it does not contain measures to ensure a fair share of costs among the public that will promote the maintenance of the public broadcasting system, they said.

     The committee, led by Fujifilm Holdings Corp. President Shigetaka Komori, asked the management to resubmit a revised plan by September 2008. It is unusual for the committee to reject the business plan.

     By refusing to approve the plan, the committee effectively demanded that NHK offer a greater reduction in the viewing fee. While NHK originally planned to start lowering the fee from October 2008, the fee reduction will be postponed to in or after April 2009, due to the committee's decision.

     While I applaud the committe's efforts to drive down the public subsidy that NHK recieves  the real question is why do entities like the NHK and BBC continue to live off of the public's teat when they are now all fighting with successful privately funded competitors.  The original idea for public funding was to ensure equitable access to the airwaves for all citizens, rather than private companies focusing on highly profitable markets, and ignoring rural and small town customers.  The fact that can, and do act as propaganda tools for their parent governments was certainly not lost on their creators.  In the age of video on demand, live streams, DVDs and staellite sytems with 300+ channels the days of the publicly funded, state owned broadcasters should be over, yet they continue to cling to life in places as far apart and dissimilar as Britain and Japan.  The strongest argument against such fees is the fact that since they are no longer the sole content provider why sould people pay for content that they may or may not view.  Thankfully the US avoided such siliness and has always had ad revenue supported radio and television.  I know that the NHK has turned out some fine programs, including the Planetes anime, which is excellent.  But it can not realisticly maintain that it requires public dollars to survive when none of its competitors need public largesse to produce programming of equal quality.

Posted by: raging tachikoma at 01:21 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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