Tokyo MX

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JOMX-DTV (channel 9), branded as Tokyo MX (officially stylized as TOKYO MX), is an

Although Tokyo is at the center of Japan's media industry, the proliferation of independent television stations in the Kanto area excluded the prefecture. In 1985, governor Shunichi Suzuki requested a UHF frequency for a television station limited to Tokyo.^[1]: 4 On January 30, 1991, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications granted the UHF channel 14 allocation for Tokyo.^[2] The Tokyo Metropolitan Government, as well as the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce and Industry, revealed their license bid, with 159 candidates.^[1]: 4

On April 30, 1993, a group led by former Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank (now Mizuho Bank) employee Tetsuo Fujimori founded the Tokyo Metropolitan Television Broadcasting Corporation (TMT, later MX) to construct the sixth commercial television station that would be licensed to Tokyo. Test transmissions began in April 1995.^[1]: 6 The station received its license on October 13, 1995, and began test transmissions two days later under the name MX-TV. MX-TV signed on the air on November 1, 1995, at 4:00 JST with a 14-hour long introductory program entitled "Countdown MX Television" (カウントダウンMXテレビ, Kauntodaun MX Terebi); regular broadcast commenced at 18:00 JST that same day.^[1]: 6

The station's first executive producer was Yoshihiko Muraki, a former producer at TV Man Union, a production company related to TBS. Inspired by the New York-focused news channel NY1, Muraki wanted to differentiate the station from its longer established competitors by dedicating 12 hours of programming daily to rolling news, and the rest to alternative programming focusing on the Tokyo region. The news programming, under the name Tokyo News (東京NEWS), revolutionised Japanese TV news by introducing the concept of video journalism, in which the station's journalists recorded, produced, and edited their stories, alongside reporting on them. These 12 hours of news were divided into 5 daily blocks: morning, noon, evening, night, and overnight. It also offered reports live from the Metropolitan Police Department, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, and the Telecom Center building, where the station's original headquarters were housed. In April 1996, the station installed a transmitter in the Ogasawara Islands, which are under the prefecture's jurisdiction.^[1]: 8

The station suffered in its first years for a poor signal and heavy management disputes. Some of the shareholders lacked any kind of TV broadcasting experience, and scandals arose over the operation and shareholding structure of the broadcaster. Additionally, its analog signal from Tokyo Tower did not cover the entire region, with its signal being poor in the eastern-most parts of the city. As the struggles continued, Muraki resigned in June 1996, and station VP and General Manager Kazuo Kinumura was dismissed that following August. In September, the station's Programming Committee resigned. Shortly thereafter, and in the wake of the Asian financial crisis, the station began to suffer from serious economic problems.^[3]

The crisis began to be sorted by June of 1997, after FM Tokyo stepped up and bought a controlling stake in the broadcaster. As part of the transaction, FM Tokyo's president Wataru Goto and Odakyu Electric Railway chairman Tsutomu Shimizu were appointed as president and vice president. Goto and Shimizu decided to drop the ambitious news format and reposition the channel as a more generalist broadcaster with a strong local focus. Although news programming was retained, albeit in a reduced form and in a more traditional format, the station began adding more entertainment programming, including locally oriented variety shows and coverage of local sports, as well as late-night anime, and infomercials during off-peak timeslots. This improved the station's ratings and finances, and the company became profitable by 2002.^[4]

The service was relayed nationwide as part of the now-defunct DirecTV service from April 1998 to September 2000, when its services ended.^[1]: 10

On December 12, 2000, MX-TV was rebranded as Tokyo MX Television (東京MXテレビ, Tōkyō MX Terebi). The station commenced its digital terrestrial television signal on December 1, 2003, and would rebrand as Tokyo MX in July 2006, after moving its studios and headquarters to its current location in the Chiyoda ward. These moves would ultimately hamper, once again, the station's finances, but the launch of digital terrestrial broadcasts would allow the station's signal to be in a par with its competitors and allowing more viewers to see their programming. Ultimately, the station would recover from these financial difficulties by 2011.

Tokyo MX