TV Japan Blog

 テレビジャパンのカート・ソス技術顧問の自己紹介です。カートは各種の調査や、衛星会社・CATV局などとの交渉にあたっています。

About 18 years ago I was a semi-retired GE/RCA/satellite/TV exec running some small businesses in Florida. I received a call from some friends at ABC-TV who said NHK was looking to start a new Japanese network in the U.S. and needed some consulting to help launch the new venture. I met with the initial management team and liked the people and found the new Japanese channel idea very interesting.

My first task was to find new office space suitable for a TV studio. I had some fun doing this since JNG was the first foreign language media company to do so. I then surveyed and found that Japanese really wanted a TV channel.

NHK then equipped our studio for a half-day Japanese TV channel and I visited cable TV systems to persuade them to carry TV JAPAN on one of their valuable 40 analog TV channels. We were successful at achieving distribution in a dozen cable systems located in Japanese population centers including Hawaii. However, sometimes we had no choice due to scarce capacity but to share a channel with Playboy which used the channel at night.

However, we also wanted to have the capability to reach all Japanese throughout the U.S. and we negotiated with the U.S.'s first satellite direct-to-home service (PrimeStar) to be one of their first digital TV channels. We used this platform to expand our subscriber base out side of the major cities and later converted to the Echostar DBS platform which offered greater growth opportunity including into Canada.

Around this time we converted a 24-hour TV JAPAN channel as the cable TV industry started converting from analog to digital. So, we needed to renegotiate all of our cable distribution contracts to take advantage of the new digital channel capacity opportunities for TV JAPAN. Then the telephone companies decided to offer IPTV in competition with cable TV. So, we went on the road again to conclude IPTV agreements for TV JAPAN distribution in the U.S. and Canada.

It has truly been my pleasure to contribute to the above accomplishments as a member of the team of six generations of JNG executive management since 1989. The future for TVJ promises to be just as exciting.