Television in Japan

Television broadcasting in Japan started in 1950, although the first television tests were conducted as early as 1926 using a combined mechanical Nipkow disk and electronic Braun tube system, later switching to an all-electronic system in the 1930s using a domestically developed iconoscope system. In spite of that, because of the beginning of World War II in the Pacific region, this first full-fledged TV broadcast experimentation lasted only a few months. Regular television broadcasts only started several years after the war, in 1953, when the public NHK General TV and the commercial Nippon Television were launched in the span of a few months.

A modified version of the North American NTSC system for analog signals, called NTSC-J was used for analog broadcast until 2011. Starting July 24, 2011, the analog broadcast has ceased and only digital broadcast using the ISDB standard is available.

All Japanese households having at least one TV set are mandated to pay an annual subscription fee used to fund NHK, the Japanese public service broadcaster. The fee varies from ¥14,910 to ¥28,080 depending on the method and timing of payment and on whether one receives only terrestrial television or also satellite broadcasts. Households on welfare may be excused from the subscription payments. In any case, there is no authority to impose sanctions or fines in the event of non-payment; people may (and many do) throw away the bills and turn away the occasional bill collector, without consequence.

In Japan, there are seven nationwide television networks – two owned by the national public broadcaster NHK, and five private networks – as follows. Although some of the network names shown below are used only for news programming, the applicable organizations also distribute a variety of other programs over most of the same stations.

Japan pioneered HDTV for decades with an analog implementation (MUSE/Hi-Vision). The old system is not compatible with the new digital standards. Japanese terrestrial broadcasting of HD via ISDB-T started on December 1, 2003 in the Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya metropolitan areas. It has been reported that 27 million HD receivers had been sold in Japan as of October 2007.

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