Achievements

The aim of this paper is to discuss about Japanese broadcasting system that corresponds with depopulating society by criticizing the present system and analyzing a survey on local commercial broadcasters. The depopulation has two kinds of influence on local broadcasters. First, it brings the direct effects such as standardization of TV programs, reduction of market scale, the movement of users, change of users' lifestyle, and so on. The second effect is an indirect one. Namely, the necessity to have independent, substantial management foundation will be important because local broadcasters will have to watch over local government.This paper proposes policies for structural control of broadcasting system that are based on the following three directions. That is, (1) The system that local broadcasters can expand their market into outside of the prefecture area. (2) The system that local broadcasters make it easy to choose their management policy. (3) The flexible system according to the regional characteristics.