Continued from the previous post: https://conjyak.com/2025/01/17/did-hashimoto-nanami-of-nogizaka46-and-watanabe-mayu-of-akb48-retire-from-the-entertainment-industry-due-to-sexual-harassment-by-former-johnnys-smap-member-nakai-masahiro/

 

The January 17, 2025 Fuji TV Press Conference

The press conference on January 17th was led by CEO of Fuji TV Minato Koichi.
Minato apologized for not giving sufficient explanation up to the present.
An internal investigation with an external lawyer was being done by Fuji TV since last year [2024], but in order to investigate whether the company’s actions were proper, a new investigative committee with a third party lawyer as its core has been established.
However, the company also stated that, “We do not believe that this is a third party committee that is in accordance with the guidelines of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations.”
The main controversies of Fuji TV at the moment are:
-Their denial that they had anything to do with the meeting of Nakai Masahiro and the female Fuji TV announcer.
-Their treatment of and internal investigation concerning the incident that the female announcer experienced (the company was aware from June 2023 that there was some issue).
-Whether the practice of Fuji employees setting up private meetings between women [e.g. Fuji TV announcers] and entertainers [e.g. VIPs in show business] is normalized.
Inquiries into these controversies will be entrusted to the new investigative committee.
To any questions about the details of the above issues, Minato refrained from answering and gave as reasons the protection of personal privacy of the people involved and because the details are the subject of the investigation.

NHK and private TV networks are not part of the press clubs (Radio and TV Press Club and Tokyo Broadcast Press Club) of which members were allowed to attend the press conference. NHK asked for permission to record the press conference via video but they were denied. Fuji TV asked that reporting of the press conference begin only after the whole press conference was concluded.
The press clubs are for press that report on radio and TV companies such as newspapers and news agencies, rather than for radio and TV media itself. Thus, no radio or TV media are part of those press clubs. Only after TV networks negotiated with the press clubs were NHK and private TV networks allowed to send an observer to the press conference. However, observers are not allowed to ask questions nor bring a video camera. Fuji TV’s reasoning was that the press conference is a regularly scheduled February press conference by the company that has been pushed forward to January. Video cameras have never been allowed in the regularly scheduled press conferences, and thus that is no different with this press conference.

A professor on media matters, Kageyama Takahiko, states that he found the attitude “backward-looking.” Although the establishment of a third party investigative committee is meritable, it seemed as though protection of privacy and human rights was given as an excuse to withhold information and explanation. He criticized the decision to not open the press conference to all media, especially as Fuji TV is a member of the media itself.

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20250117/k10014695441000.html

https://smart-flash.jp/entame/325784/1/1/

 

Corporate Sponsors Begin to Withdraw

Due to corporate sponsors being unhappy with Fuji TV’s handling of the Nakai Masahiro and female Fuji TV announcer sexual harassment controversies, some of them have begun to withdraw their commercials from Fuji TV shows. The spots are replaced with AC Japan public service announcements.

https://x.com/soonkkkk/status/1880414073281737189

AC Japan (Advertising Council Japan) is a non-profit organization that creates public service announcements on behalf of non-profit organizations. Its advertisements are often aired on TV shows when for some reason, sponsors do not want their advertisements shown on TV.

 

The Long Play

The 7% shareholder of Fuji Media Holdings, Dalton Investments and its affiliate Rising Sun Management, has been critical of the conglomerate nature of Fuji and advocated for breaking up the company. From a Bloomberg article from January 15th 2025:

And from a letter by Dalton Investments and Rising Sun Management from May of 2024, which also notes that Fuji Media Holdings’ (FMH) price-to-book ratio is less than half and calls on the company to spin off a building that the company owns:

The Sankei Building is likely part of the book value of Fuji Media Holdings that is helping it to exceed the market capitalization. Shareholders would earn more from selling off the building rather than having Fuji Media Holdings continue to own the property for its business use. In other words, it’s a proposal of a partial (or rather one-part) break up and liquidation of Fuji Media Holdings.
In the most recent letter by Dalton Investments and Rising Sun Management where the main message was the demand for a third party committee to investigate the sexual harassment controversy surrounding Nakai Masahiro and the treatment of Fuji TV female announcers, the conglomerate nature of Fuji Media Holdings was mentioned again in a negative way:

Horie Takafumi brought this to the attention of the Japanese public on January 18th of 2025, also adding that in the case that activist shareholders (in general, not just Dalton Investments and Rising Sun Management) are able to wrest control of the company from the current management in the aftermath of the sexual harassment scandal, even just selling off the Sankei Building would earn all shareholders a profit.

It’s no wonder that Dalton Investments and Rising Sun Management are not afraid of the short or medium term damage to the share price of Fuji Media Holdings that their own call for a third party investigation into the controversy may cause.

 

The Short Play

While Dalton Investments and Rising Sun Management are major shareholders of Fuji Media Holdings, owning 7%, that alone is not exactly enough to unilaterally enforce decisions upon the company. Can they or other activist investors raise their share of Fuji Media Holdings to, as Google Translate translates Horie Takafumi’s words, “realize social justice and make a profit” at the same time?

Horie notes that there are roadblocks. Fuji Media Holdings is a Certified Broadcasting Holding Company (認定放送持株会社), Fuji TV is a subsidiary of Fuji Media Holdings, and Dalton Investments and Rising Sun Management are shareholders of Fuji Media Holdings. The regulations regarding Certified Broadcasting Holding Companies state that a shareholder cannot have more than one third of the voting rights for a Certified Broadcasting Holding Company and a Certified Broadcasting Holding Company cannot have more than one fifth of its voting rights be owned by foreign capital.

https://www.soumu.go.jp/main_content/000404701.pdf

If we assume for simplicity that owning Fuji Media Holdings shares means having voting rights that come with those shares, that means that Dalton Investments and Rising Sun Management cannot own more than 20% of Fuji Media Holdings – assuming there are no other foreign shareholders (if there are other foreign shareholders, Dalton Investments and Rising Sun Management can own even less). And even if they find a domestic investor who agrees with their long term plans for Fuji Media Holdings, such a domestic investor on their own cannot own more than 33.3% of Fuji Media Holdings.

This is why Horie Takafumi is making a populist call for people to purchase Fuji Media Holdings shares so that they as a group – if they acquire enough shares – can make changes to the company.

https://x.com/takapon_jp/status/1880905935029493852

If the 93% of shareholders other than Dalton Investments and Rising Sun Management are not willing to go along with the activist investor’s plans, no wonder Minato Koichi and the current Fuji TV management believe that a minimalist response to the call for a third party investigation that they presented at the January 17th press conference may be enough for them to hold on to what they can.

 

Foreign Ownership of Fuji Media Holdings in a Bit More Detail

An image of a table showing the foreign ownership shares of Japanese private TV networks (or the holding companies that own the TV networks) is being circulated on X/Twitter:

I’m not exactly sure of the source of this but it seems to be from a show from DHC Television (currently Toranomon Television) from 2021.

https://matomebu.com/news/tv20210323/

https://www.zaikei.co.jp/article/20210324/613531.html

Back in 2021, Fuji TV and Nippon Television were in the news for having their foreign ownership shares be above 20%, seemingly violating regulations. However, as seen in the second column in the image above, which has the largest numbers carefully set to be right under 20%, there’s a technical bit to it. The first column is “Direct holding ratio of FOL by foreigners” where FOL is Foreign Ownership Limitation issues of company shares and the second column is “Foreign Ownership Ratio” (English terms from https://www.jasdec.com/en/description/less/for_pubinfo/for_pubinfo.html). In Japanese, the first column 外国人直接保有比率 can be translated as Foreigner Direct Ownership Ratio and the second column 外国人保有比率 can be translated as Foreigner Ownership Ratio. None of these descriptions explain what is going on.

In fact, there is a clause that states that when foreign ownership of  a broadcasting company exceeds the 20% limit, the company can “veto” the ownership registration of the foreign ownership that exceeds 20% so that the ratio of voting rights that are foreign-owned becomes less than 20% (the exact regulation is that foreign voting rights must be less than 1/5 of the total). Doing this keeps the broadcasting company’s the ratio of foreign-owned voting rights within regulations.

https://www.soumu.go.jp/main_sosiki/joho_tsusin/policyreports/joho_tsusin/joho_bukai/pdf/030414_3_2.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RUoWCsfCac

Thus, going back to the images with the two columns, the first column is the ratio of company shares that are foreign-owned and the second column is effectively the ratio of voting rights of that company that are foreign-owned. Thus, Fuji TV at 31.90% and Nippon TV at 23.63% at the top of that chart were not in actually in violation of regulations.

However, in April of 2021, Fuji TV announced that they were in fact in violation of regulations when the ratio of foreign-owned voting rights went up to… 20.00083%. It was, as one might expect from that number, due to inadvertently not excluding enough foreign ownership of shares when it came to registering ownership for the purpose of counting voting rights. The takeaway is that companies, such as Fuji Media Holdings and Nippon Television Holdings (the holding companies of Fuji TV and Nippon TV) in 2021 as the chart above shows, with foreign ownership of shares above 20%, continuously legally exclude a certain amount of foreign ownership when it comes to counting voting rights in order to stay within the regulation of having foreign-owned voting rights be under 20%.

https://av.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/1317478.html

https://www.fujimediahd.co.jp/news/

https://contents.xj-storage.jp/xcontents/46760/0fe5958e/f759/46ed/8ff9/1ef87da42fe6/140120210408491711.pdf

Coming back to 2025, this means that Dalton Investments and Rising Sun Management (plus other foreign investors in total) are free to acquire more shares of Fuji Media Holdings if they believe there is upside to it without any limit, but the total voting power of foreign owners of Fuji Media Holdings will likely remain at 19.99%.

https://www.jasdec.com/description/less/publication_fol/publication_fol.html

https://www.jasdec.com/en/description/less/for_pubinfo/for_pubinfo.html

The above foreign ownership data of Fuji Media Holdings, as can be seen in the upper right of each image, is as of January 20, 2025.

I found some interesting sources (both in Japanese) on pay and television appearances in the Japanese entertainment industry.  I don’t know how reliable these sources are, but, well, they’re still interesting.

Pay

http://geinoupro.com/guarantee.html
Archived

Unfortunately, there’s no clear date for these numbers, but it says “2016” at the bottom of the page.  There are a bunch of different categories and in each category are listed some famous people/examples and their estimated yearly earnings/pay per project.

(Generally speaking, 100 million yen ≈ 1 million USD, or 100 yen ≈ 1 USD.)

In the actors section, there’s Takeda Tetsuya, who has appeared in the Gaki No Tsukai New Years Eve Batsu before and is also very often parodied in Gaki No Tsukai and other comedy shows, at 80 million yen/year.

In the actresses section, there’s Yoshitaka Yuriko, who has appeared in the Gaki No Tsukai New Years Eve Batsu before, at 260 million yen/year.

In the singers section, some names that have been parodied in Gaki before: Kuwata Keisuke, Yazawa Eikichi, and Mori Shinichi.

In the comedians section, there is (limiting mentions to people who are both famous and whom I know have appeared on Gaki before) Matsuko Deluxe (she shouldn’t be in this section.  She should probably categorized as a general/non-specific tarento), Hamada Masatoshi and Matsumoto Hitoshi, Miyasako Hiroyuki and Hotohara Toru (Ameagari Kesshitai), Chihara Junior, and Sekine Tsutomu.

Some of the highest sports earners are Tanaka Masahiro (MLB), Kuroda Hiroki (MLB; last played in 2014, though, so the list may be from that year or older), Nishikori Kei (tennis), Darvish Yu (MLB), Ishikawa Ryo (golf), Kagawa Shinji (Premier League, Bundesliga), Honda Keisuke (Serie A), and Ichiro (MLB).

Creators of the biggest manga are high up there: Oda Eiichiro of One Piece and Toriyama Akira of Dragonball taking in A-list Hollywood/CEO level yearly earnings.

Variety TV show pay: the production costs for one hour of a prime time variety show ranges from 20 million to 30 million yen.  An A-list MC for such a program (e.g. Downtown) earns 2 million to 3 million yen while major guests go from 300k to 800k yen and medium level comedians from 100k to 300k yen.

Drama TV: production costs for prime time dramas cost per hour anywhere from 15 million yen to 70 million yen.  NHK Taiga dramas are in a different tier, spending more than 100 million yen per hour.   The lead role in a drama (1 season about 4 months) takes in from 1 million to 2 million yen per episode.

Work outside of TV/media (for example, entertainment at some event): Medium-level comedian earns between 200k and 500k yen/event, a top model at 500k yen, and an A-list tarento at 1 million yen.

For TV show appearances (I think non-MC, so as a guest), an A-list tarento earns between 1 million to 2 million per episode on the major national networks (half for TV Tokyo, since TV Tokyo is a regional network).

Producers at major TV networks earn from 10 million (mid-level) to 20 million yen and above (executive producer) per year, producers at production companies earn about 500k yen per year, and an AD (assistant director) at a production company earns around 180k yen per month.

But the most interesting information to me here, at the bottom of the page, is how the revenue of entertainers is split between the entertainer and the talent management agency in which he or she resides.  Talent agencies in the Japanese entertainment industry are really powerful and I would say are an oligopoly that sit squarely in the middle of the negotiating table between the entertainers and the places at which they hope entertain (TV, movies, commercials, events, etc.).

Here is a ranked list of the most powerful talent agencies, from the same website: http://geinoupro.com/top100.html.  (Archived.)  At number 3, you see Yoshimoto, Downtown’s talent agency, as well as that of the rest of the Gaki cast (Hosei, Cocorico, even License).  A huge majority of (if not practically all) Kansai-based comedians are from Yoshimoto.

An entertainer finding any kind of entertainment work on the side without going through their agency is a no-no (probably has that in their contracts).  If the MC of a popular TV show is from a certain talent agency that’s powerful, the agency can stuff that show’s guests every episode with their own entertainers.  If you notice that the participants/guests at shows hosted by Downtown or Ninety-Nine seem to be over-represented by Yoshimoto comedians, that’s not a coincidence.

On the other side of that, if you cross a talent agency, you can get blacklisted.  If a powerful agency denies a TV network its stable of comedians or star actors, that’s major trouble for that network’s variety shows and dramas.  If a powerful agency has good relations (or demands good relations, using its power as a stick) with other agencies and networks, a blacklisted entertainer will have real trouble getting any kind of work (the term for this in Japanese is 干される, “to be dried.”  Kinda sounds like the English “hung out to be dried,” but blackballed or blacklisted is the real meaning).  The usual ways that can happen to an entertainer is if he angers someone high up or tries to break his contract either to try to move to another agency or go independent (create his own agency).  Trying to move to another agency – which one would think should be made easy for entertainers in a capitalist economy – is tricky especially if agencies are on good terms with each other and want to limit turnover and instability in their stable of entertainers.  Trying to create your own agency, of course, is just adding a purely new entrant into the market, so you wouldn’t expect other agencies to really like that.  Yet, moves to other agencies and creations of new agencies do happen, either because the entertainer is on good terms with their current agency (probably the most important factor) or when it’s a move to a larger/more powerful agency (e.g. a regionally successful tarento moving to national-level media) or when it’s a powerful entertainer creating their own agency.  For example, Downtown probably could create their own agency if they really wanted to.  Beat Takeshi created his own talent agency.

But let’s go back again to how the revenue of entertainers is split between the entertainer himself and the talent agency in which he or she resides, on the bottom of this page.  What I noticed (and what you might already have heard if you watch Japanese variety TV and entertainers speak about this subject – it’s not a secret or anything and is openly talked about on TV) is how large a share of an entertainer’s revenue agencies take and how much it varies.  Note that this is how revenue from individual appearances (TV, movies, events, etc.) are shared.  I believe entertainers get a base salary that’s separate from this.

Talent Agency: Entertainer’s share to Agency’s share

Avex: 9 to 1
Asai Kikaku: 7 to 3
Office Kitano (Beat Takeshi’s talent agency): 7 to 3
Ota Production: 6 to 4
Jinrikisha: 6 to 4
Sun Music: 6 to 4
HoriPro Com: 5 to 5
Watanabe Entertainment: 5 to 5
Ken-On: 3 to 7
Jobby Kids: 3 to 7
Shochiku Geinou: 2 to 8
Yoshimoto Creative Agency (Downtown’s talent agency): 1 to 9
Not found on that page but from Wikipedia is HoriPro (HoriPro is the parent company of HoriPro Com): 0 to 10 (i.e. salary only).

HoriPro is actually a major agency (ranked 4th in that list from above) with some big names.  I assume that their big names are able to negotiate high salaries for themselves, but yup, the crazy thing is that their entertainers get no revenue from individual appearances, i.e. for each piece of work that they do.  Yoshimoto isn’t much different at 1 to 9.  The reasoning I believe is that agencies like that will help their entertainers by finding them jobs (or “allot them jobs,” considering how powerful they are) and if they’re successful, negotiating with the networks to give them their own shows.  For example, Yoshimoto might negotiate with a TV network to try to get Cocorico their own show.   And then you have some agencies that are 9 to 1 or 7 to 3 (Kyaeen is from Asai Kikaku).  Perhaps these agencies don’t give as much support to their entertainers?  Being a smaller agency might also mean that they just don’t have the power to give that support (nor to attract entertainers if they took too much of the revenue), so they give good rates to their entertainers.  Avex is mainly in music, so the situation there might simply be different.  Rather than having to deal with an oligopoly of major TV networks (NHK, NTV, TBS, Fuji, Asahi), maybe music sales are more of a meritocracy?  As long as you have sales one way or another, your power as a musician rises, so a giant middleman agency guarding the gates to TV media is much less powerful there.

Agencies that take up a lot of the revenue may also be able to financially support their middle and lower ranks more.  In effect, Yoshimoto might take Downtown’s revenue and financially support its huge number of up-and-coming (or even failing) comedians who aren’t on TV at the moment.  In return, Downtown gets in-kind support – basically an army of underlings who can be personal assistants or proteges at any time for them.  In a way, in these kinds of talent agencies, perhaps they’ve turned the existence of an entertainer almost into a white collar worker in a large company.  Downtown is effectively like a C-level executive of the sales department.  Downtown is responsible for the movement of a lot of money into the company but he doesn’t personally take home all of it and instead the money is used by the company to support the rest of the staff below.  In return, Downtown has a huge number of subordinates for whatever they might need – from doing their dry cleaning to appearing at the last minute on one of their shows as a guest (which of course doubles as an opportunity for that subordinate to further his career).

Television Appearances (and TV Commercial Sponsors)

Here are links to lists of entertainers who had the most television appearances and TV commercial sponsors in recent years.

2012, 2013, 2014, 2015

Interestingly, you don’t see Downtown in these.  I think because Downtown MCs a lot of shows, they appear in those shows once a week.  Perhaps because MCing takes more time in some cases (e.g. for Gaki No Tsukai, Matsumoto thinks up and decides on what segments and series to do), or simply because MCs are paid more, or because MC-level tarentos don’t want to dilute their brand, MC-level tarentos tend to not appear as guests on other shows as much and stick to their own shows.  On the other hand are some tarentos who don’t MC as much but appear in a lot of programs as guests.  Some entertainers who are perennially at the top of these lists (generally tarentos who both MC and appear as guests on other shows a lot) are Shitara Osamu of Bananaman, Ariyoshi Hiroiki, Okubo Kayoko of Oasiz, and Matsuko Deluxe, who’s also often near the top of the CM lists.  Rola for a few years was also near the top in appearances, and continues to be near the top of the CM lists.