Japan’s commercial television broadcasters are going to suffer severe financial difficulties when terrestrial digital broadcasting takes off in 2000. The National Association of Commercial Broadcasters in Japan has predicted that television stations in Japan’s three main metropolitan areas will see their ratios of pretax profits in relation to sales fall from around 9% to 5% in 2000, and will fall further to 2% by 2010. A report in the Japanese newspaper, Nihon Keizai Shimbun says local broadcasters with weak financial bases will start turning in a loss, and won’t manage to get back to a profit until after 2010. European broadcasters plan to deploy digital terrestrial programs over the next few years, the UK will launch its services in the summer of 1998 and another major market (CI No 3,189). The Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications has urged Japan Broadcasting Corp and commercial broadcasters to start ground-based digital broadcasting by 2000, but the broadcasters themselves are showing reluctance to undertake massive capital investment. This has been more strongly felt as the majority of Japanese broadcasters are planning to start digital satellite broadcasting at around the same time.
