A tour of Asahi TV
Whirring, blinking, clacking. These sounds accompany the production of a bustling evening news broadcast of Asahi TV. Seven of us on the Montana Journalism Abroad trip had the opportunity to see how Japan’s most viewed television newscast operates during the lead-up to a 10pm broadcast at Hodo Station.
Our feet were tired from walking. We've averaged about 10 miles a day since we've been in Tokyo, and we didn’t know what the tour would be like. The lobby was filled with statues of cartoon characters and cardboard cutouts from television shows produced by Asahi TV. But we were on our way to view the news operation, spread out over four floors. Asahi TV has six different studios around Japan, producing news, game shows and comedies, but this studio is home of the news operation.
The executive producer of one of the weeknight programs was our guide. We started in the camera room, where a dozen photojournalists lounged around watching a wall of televisions. They huddle in this basement waiting for a call from the newsroom to go cover an event, a news conference or a disaster. We were shown the personal radiation detectors camera operators must wear if they cover the ongoing fallout after 3/11. The station is required to monitor employees' exposure and ground them if they are exposed to too much radiation. In the fourth floor newsroom, we watched producers lining out the show to come, a room where video editors were working in linear and non-linear formats, and the set, where the weather anchors were rehearsing before the program went live.
I work as a news reporter for KAJ-TV in Kalispell, Montana. One of the biggest differences between our newsroom and Asahi TV was that the news packages are much longer, eight to ten minutes in Japan compared to the typical two to four minutes in America. Each story has a producer, so the lead story producer was standing next to the director, only to depart after the first story was aired. Another producer stepped in for the second story in the show. Surprisingly, Asahi TV does not emphasize online first, a common way of thinking these days for television news operations in the States.
The first story of the night was a big scoop. Asahi TV had email evidence of Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo using his position to help his friends get jobs. The control room was unexpectedly quiet during the newscast and we whispered our questions as our guide told us, in a whisper, what was going on.
The excitement and rush of breaking news is unmatched in other media, heightened by whirring machines, hushed voices and scurrying editors. Not only did this experience invigorate our reporting efforts for the future, it gave us some important perspective on how our own media works. We cannot wait to continue to report and deliver these stories back home.
An audio postcard by Katy Spence