TV Asahi Corporation

TV Asahi Brings Out Drama & Formats from Japan

TV Asahi’s strength in international distribution lies with its drama series, “especially our long-running detective series as well as our innovative medical dramas,” says Yumi Shimizu, co-director in charge of international distribution. “Adding to this, we used new approaches to produce Roppongi Class, the Japanese version of the popular Korean webtoon series, which has garnered strong interest from a young demographic this summer.” Animation for both kids and young adults are also steady earners, Shimizu notes. 

As medical dramas are still a big draw for audiences, TV Asahi has a brand-new series called The Travel Nurse premiering this October. The drama centers on two freelance nurses who move from hospital to hospital with one suitcase. “It’s a medical story set in the chaotic field of aging society and one after a global pandemic,” says Shimizu. “Produced by the creators of our megahit medical series Doctor-X, we have high expectations for the show.”

There’s also a robust slate of formats in the TV Asahi catalog. Sneak n Shop, a game show in which contestants need to avoid drones chasing them, gathered interest from several territories this year, according to Shimizu. 

The company’s brand-new launch is Fund My Fantasy, in which professionals gather to design a solution to various and seemingly impossible dream plans. At the end of the show, they will present the estimated cost to the audience. “It’s a fun show that stimulates and satisfies one’s intellectual curiosity,” says Shimizu. 

TV Asahi is also rebranding and relaunching two of its longest-running series. One is the romantic reality show Sweet Kiss, Bitter Kiss, which follows young actors and actresses performing together in scripted love stories to see whether they will develop actual feelings toward each other. The popular show is now in its eighth season in Japan. The other one is My Life in Your Textbook, airing now for more than eight years. In the popular studio show, real people share their own roller-coaster stories firsthand—their journeys, highs and lows, hopes, fears and shattered dreams.

“We feel that there is high demand for both scripted and non-scripted formats,” Shimizu says. 

As TV Asahi gears up for Cannes, Shimizu notes that “more than anything, we are excited to be back at MIPCOM and have face-to-face meetings with people all around the globe.” Shimizu adds that exploring co-production and co-development opportunities is also on the planner.

SHOWCASE: TV Asahi Formats Are Ready to Entertain

The Japanese market has proven to be a prolific supplier of outside-of-the-box formats, which have piqued the attention of audiences around the world. TV Asahi, for one, has been feeling the strong momentum of the increased demand coming from the marketplace. “We are definitely getting more attention than before and have made several option and distribution deals on various scales,” says Miyuki Nakasone, sales executive for formats at TV Asahi.

Most recently, TV Asahi partnered with Small World IFT to distribute Happily Ever Apart, a divorce-relationship show, worldwide (TV Asahi continues to handle China and Southeast Asia). Media Ranch has optioned the format for the U.S. production company Figure 8 Films. TV Asahi also just optioned its game format Sneak n Shop to Conrad Films for German-speaking territories in Europe.

“In the Japanese market, talk shows and quiz shows are always the most popular,” says Nakasone. “From international buyers, the first things they ask from us are physical game shows, then reality entertainment formats.”

TV Asahi has four new unscripted formats and two scripted formats for this season. Among them, Welcome to the House of Gifts is a reality show in which a group of celebrity hosts visits beautiful homes of the rich and famous, and the items they get from those houses will be used to renovate clients’ houses.

Hands Off and Acting Out are both new types of game shows, Nakasone says. In Hands Off, contestants must complete different missions without touching objects and obstacles. Nakasone describes Acting Out as a “fun” and “crazy” show in which celebrity contestants are asked to listen to several scripted and witty narrations and have to act creatively to match the bizarre context.

Then there is Shuffle Island, a reality show involving a group of attractive young people looking for love, taking place on two remote islands. “Launched last November on our affiliate Abema TV streaming platform, it has become extremely popular with young audiences,” Nakasone says. “It is a new type of reality show, where ‘chance’ plays a big part in the love drama.”

On the scripted front, The Men of the WADA Family is a sitcom-style series featuring three generations of a family living together. All three are male and work in different media outlets: newspaper, television and web journal. Switch, meanwhile, is a feature-length drama full of dark humor, written by award-winning writer Yuji Sakamoto, centering on an ex-couple with a shocking secret.

“Being a national broadcaster, we constantly produce new shows for the Japanese market, and as the supplier of the most successful drama and entertainment shows, we have many producers eager to create new types of formats,” Nakasone says. “We are always trying to bring to the market some of those brand-new concepts.”