Fuji TV began on a channel most Japanese sets could not even tune
When Fuji Television went on air in 1959, it broadcast on channel 8, while most Japanese television sets only went up to channel 6. The station persuaded appliance makers to mass-produce 12-channel receivers, and within two decades had reinvented itself with a slogan declaring that if it isn't fun, it isn't TV.
The station grew from a 1957 licence fight. Tokyo's two private radio broadcasters, Nippon Cultural Broadcasting and Nippon Broadcasting System, combined their bids, then joined forces with the film studios Toho and Shochiku, winning a licence on 8 July 1957. Founded by the radio bosses Nobutaka Shikanai and Shigeo Mizuno, the company soon swapped the kanji characters in its name for simpler katakana because the originals had too many strokes to display clearly on screen.
Regular broadcasts began on 1 March 1959, and a month later Fuji covered the wedding of Crown Prince Akihito and Michiko in a special lasting more than 15 hours, a moment that helped television take off in Japan. In 1961 it became the first Japanese station to broadcast all day apart from late night. It aired its first colour programme in September 1964, the British puppet series Stingray, and in 1969 showed the Apollo 11 landing in colour. Its network, the Fuji News Network, launched in 1966 with 6 affiliates and grew to 21 stations by the end of 1969.
Workplace practices changed slowly. Fuji had no union until 1966, when staff pushed to end a rule forcing women to retire at 25, and equal retirement at 55 only arrived in 1972. A 1970 attempt to hand programme making to subsidiaries failed and was abandoned in 1980.
Ratings slumped in the late 1970s, prompting budget cuts and diversification, including co-organising a Mona Lisa exhibition that drew over 1.5 million visitors. After founding chairman Shikanai resigned in 1980, the station dropped its old motto about mothers and children for a fun-first approach and in 1982 won the ratings triple crown. In 1997 it moved to Odaiba, spurring development of that then almost empty waterfront. Fuji was also Japan's first station to air animated series made specially for television.
Source: Fuji Television
