66. Fuji Media Holdings, Inc./Sankei Shimbun

⇱ The 100 largest Media Corporations 2023

Reading time:

5 minutes

66. Fuji Media Holdings, Inc./Sankei Shimbun

Sales 2023: ¥ 535.641 billion (€ 3.524 billion)

Overview

Fuji Television was founded in 1957 and was renamed Fuji Media Holdings Inc. in 2008, which in turn is part of the Japan-based Keiretsu The individual companies of the Fujisankei Communications Group are keiretsu are legally independent. The core of the Fujisankei Group (although only one of 77 companies) is Fuji Media Holdings with the Fuji Television Network and a 40 percent share in the daily newspaper “Sankei Shimbun”.

An updated company profile will be published shortly.

General Information

Headquarters
Fuji Media Holdings, Inc.
2-4-8 Daiba, Minato-ku
Tokyo 137-8088
Japan
Telephone: 0081 3 3570 8000
website: http://www.fujimediahd.co.jp/en/ir

Branches of trade: TV stations, TV production, film, newspapers, magazines, book publishers, radio
Legal form: Stock Company
Financial year: April 1st – March 31st
Founding year: 1933 (Sankei Shimbun, initially as Nippon Kogyo Shimbun), 1957 (Fuji Television Network), 2008 (Fuji Media Holdings)

Basic economic data (in million ¥)*

	2023	2022	2021	2020	2019
Fuji Media Holdings' revenue	535.641	525.087	519.941	631.482	669.230
profit Fuji Media	46.855	24.897	10.112	41.307	23.627
share price (in ¥, year-end)	1.568,50	1.074	1.108	1.100	1.571

* the financial year ends on March 31 of the following year

Executives and Directors

Board:

Masaki Miyauchi, Chairman and CEO
Osamu Kanemitsu, President and COO
Takashi Wagai, Executive Vice President
Tsuyoshi Habara, Executive Vice President
Kenji Shimizu, Executive Managing Director
Hisashi Hieda, Executive Managing Advisor
Ryunosuke Endo, Executive Managing Director
Takehiko Kiyohara, Executive Managing Director
Yoshishige Shimatani, Executive Managing Director
Akihiro Miki, Executive Managing Director

History

“Fuji Television” was founded in 1957 as a joint-stock company (Japanese Kabushiki Kaisha, abbreviated KK) in Tokyo. The founding president was Shigeo Mizuno, and the managing director was Nobutaka Shikanai (1912-1990). In 1964, Mizuno handed over the leadership of the successfully established television company to Shikanai. A similar change of guard also took place in 1968 at the daily newspaper “Sankei Shimbun”, whose chairmanship Mizuno had taken over from the newspaper founder Hisakichi Maeda in 1958; Maeda was the eldest of the three founders of the "Fuji-Sankei" group, which was formed in 1967 from an informal agreement between "Fuji TV", "Sankei Shimbun", "Nippon Hoso" and "Bunka Hoso" (another private radio station), the forerunner of today's "economic association group" ("keiretsu") called "Fujisankei Communications Group" (FCG).

These classic Japanese conglomerates were banned as part of the US occupation power's disentanglement policy after 1945, but were allowed again with restrictions in 1997 following an amendment to the antitrust law. Fuji TV boss Nobutaka Shikanai also became chairman of the FujisankeiKeiretsu with its dozens of economically independent subsidiaries, of which “Fuji TV” remains the most important to this day.

The television station "Fuji TV" began broadcasting in March 1959. Initially a network of four regional television stations, the network was gradually expanded to 28 stations, which together cover almost all of Japan and reach around 98 percent of the population. The Fuji network system is called FNS ("Fuji Network System") and maintains the "Fuji News Network" (FNN) as its in-house news agency.

Fuji TV has also been broadcasting abroad since 1982. The evening news magazine "Supertime" was first transmitted to New York and provided with English subtitles by the subsidiary "Fujisankei Communications International, Inc." (FCI). Fuji now also licenses entertainment programs to America and Europe, and since mid-2008 Fuji TV has successfully sold broadcasting concepts to FOX and BBC. The company is thus building on the sales success of individual programs in Asian countries. Fuji TV is thus better able than other Japanese broadcasting groups to compensate for falling advertising revenues. In 1997 the broadcaster moved to the new, fully digitalized television center on an artificial island in Tokyo Bay. In the same year, "Fuji TV KK" went public on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, partly to finance the expensive new building.

Then came the restructuring in 2008. After the green light from the Japanese regulatory authority, Fuji Media Holding was founded, which brought the Fuji Television Network under one roof with other media segments (music, advertising, publishing). The company's image is ambivalent. News and other "hard" information are sold by Fuji as infotainment in an entertaining and easy-to-understand way. Politically, "Fuji TV" is moderately conservative; only in some places does Fuji represent right-wing positions. The newspaper "Sankei Shimbun" is different, which follows a decidedly national-conservative course. It sees Japanese militarism of the past as a closed chapter, comparable to the excesses of western colonial powers, and for which no compensation needs to be paid. The newspaper does give the impression that it speaks for the "silent majority" of Japanese people. In fact, the "Sankei Shimbun" is the smallest of the five major daily newspapers.

Like other Japanese mass media, Fuji TV continues to show strong signs of self-censorship. This practice, known in Japan as jishuku, was particularly evident during the Fukushima reactor disaster in 2011. While most of the expert opinions in the immediate hours and days after the incident were expressed by representatives of the nuclear lobby, Fuji TV gave a voice to former physics professor and nuclear power skeptic Fujita Yuko. When he correctly speculated on March 11 that the Daiichi reactors were on the verge of meltdown, this was his last appearance. He was never invited to appear on a show again.

management

Masaki Miyauchi became Chairman and CEO of Fuji Media Holdings, Inc. (succeeding Hisashi Hieda) in mid-2019 at the age of 75. As president of Fuji TV, he has had to publicly apologize twice in recent years: in 2017 for the appearance of a character perceived to be homophobic in the popular Fuji series "Tunnels" and in 2018 when a "Me Too" scandal arose surrounding popular news anchor Juniji Tosaka, who was about to take over the primetime news.

Business segments

Fuji Media Holdings’ business is divided into three segments:

Fuji Media's "Media and Content" division generates over 82 percent of its revenues, with 15 subsidiaries in the areas of TV (terrestrial, satellite, streaming), radio, TV and film production, video games, music, advertising, publishing and direct marketing.

The “Urban Development, Hotels & Resorts” division includes the development, leasing and management of office buildings, the operation of commercial facilities and restaurants, and the sale and leasing of apartments. There is also a tourism business.

Other business areas such as IT system architecture, human resources, market research and more are grouped under “Others”. The 40 percent share in the newspaper “Sankei Shimbun” also falls into this segment.

Media database - mediadb.eu