ABSTRACT

This chapter takes up the political-economic dimension of Japanese infotainment. The field data shows that much wideshow content is recodified by (hidden) commercial components and routinized through the programme’s corners. It also shows that this is true at both the local and the national level. To deal with this issue, I observe the social and cultural linkages that mutually constitute the production and consumption of resources. As a modest contribution to the increasing attention towards a micro examination of production processes, I utilize qualitative techniques to interpret the wideshow’s economic components (e.g. ownership/sponsorship mechanisms, advertising, audience research, and tabloidization) to demonstrate the decisive role that economic tie-ups and economic-based power relations exert on production and distribution in television broadcasting. It is no longer possible to draw a broad map of society without considering the most popular ways of information transmission and the ways these connect to commercialization. If the object of analysis is Japan, a country saturated with consumption as the way of life, this imperative is even greater. This approach offers insight into the phenomenon of broadcasting in Japan today, showing the powerful role that the economy and economic-based power relations play in television production processes at both the local and the national level.