December 2012
History of Administrative Discretion and Remaining Influences
Seiichi Murakami
Many of the commercial terrestrial TV broadcasters launched between the 1950s and 1990s went through a process called unification adjustment, a behind-the-scene coordination to merge multiple applicants before granting the broadcast license. This administrative measure created complicated capital structures of broadcasters, which remain to this date and serve as an assumption that should be taken into consideration when discussing broadcast policies such as the reinforcement of local broadcasters’ management foundations.
This article tries to clarify the reality of the past opaque procedure of granting the broadcast license that is still impacting the business, by reviewing its historical background. As a result it is revealed that the form of unification adjustment varied at different periods; initially the unification of the applicants was led by the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, but afterwards as the networking of commercial broadcasters developed, national newspapers and Tokyo-based network stations became more influential and the unification procedure became more complicated with many cases involving mock applications. It is also revealed that one of the factors that brought about such changes was the ambiguity of the licensing rules.
Today there is no such unification adjustment in which the administrative authority openly involves, but it is necessary to consider various problems caused by the past unification adjustment when reviewing the structural regulation including the easement of the principle of excluding multiple ownership of the media and discussing the procedure of entering broadcasting business.