Nippon TV names chief content officer as president

Nippon TV has confirmed the appointment of chief content officer Hiroyuki Fukuda as president and chief operating officer at the Japanese media giant.

Fukuda, most recently executive vice-president and executive officer at Nippon, replaces Akira Ishizawa, who is to become director of the newly established Yomiuri Chukyo FS Broadcasting Holdings Corporation, as part of a restructuring of the company’s broadcast assets.

The company was unveiled last year and will be formally launched on 1 April.

It is being created to house four channels that are part-owned by Nippon TV: Sapporo Television Broadcasting, Chukyo TV Broadcasting, Yomiuri Telecasting and Fukuoka Broadcasting System.

Yomiuri Chukyo FS Broadcasting is owned by the channels and Nippon TV, the latter taking a stake of around 20% in the new entity.

Ishizawa leads the nascent company, which has appointed Chukyo TV chairman Kimio Maruyama as its chairman. It will produce programming together and share infrastructure to help trim costs.

Nippon veteran takes reins

Fukuda, meanwhile, has already taken on his expanded remit at Nippon TV, having first joined the company in 1985 to work in sales before moving across to programming.

He became president of production and programming and took on the responsibility of chief content officer, as well as being appointed to the board. He retains his chief content officer remit until June, although a replacement is not yet known.

The reorganisation comes as Nippon TV looks to combat declining linear viewership and increase its earnings away from broadcast, with international sales of programming and formats a key part of the strategy. Japanese drama Mother has been adapted in more than 10 countries including Greece most recently, France, Turkey, Mongolia, the Philippines, South Korea and Ukraine.

Nippon TV has been attempting to broaden its reach over recent years, with deals that included selling more than 30 of its show to Netflix for the APAC region. It also more recently sold hit time travelling drama Rebooting to the streamer.

Fukuda added: “With the downward trend in PUT (Persons Using Television) showing no signs of slowing down, we face the immediate and urgent challenge of acquiring and maintaining the volume of our individual and core target demographics.

“Increasing the share of revenue from sources other than broadcasting is an important goal, but we must start by fundamentally reviewing our approach to the annual viewer ratings battle and building a strong timetable for our broadcasting business.

“Morale across our content creation teams remains tremendously high, and barring any errors in our approach, we will recover. Strengthening the timetable is also an initiative that will form the basis for expanding our content business.”