Wii Puts Japanese Television Under Pressure

Knuckles writes "The Times reports that Japanese consumers have been 'abandoning television' in order to play with Nintendo's Wii. Recent figures from Japan's audience-tracking firms show that 'last week was the first in nearly two decades where no single show on any commercial station attracted more than a 9 per cent audience share ... According to one senior executive of the country's largest commercial television channel, Fuji TV, families who used to tune in to its colourful diet of soap operas, panel games and comedy variety shows may, instead, be drifting away and choosing to spend the same, economically-critical golden hour time playing on their Wii.'"

TV is going the way of the Dinosaurs?

[Zekasu]

It's funny to think that television is finally being replaced (or at the very least, threatened) by a medium that actually supports the end of the couch potato. Irony? Just a bit.

So?

[Spy der Mann]

I left TV for videogames, the web, chat, forums, downloadable music and anime episodes long time ago.

Re:So?

[Megane]

Except that lately, even their anime is sucking. (unless you happen to enjoy cardboard cutout fanservice series, that is) It started about three or four years ago, and while there have always been a couple of good series, they are getting pretty thin.

Right now it looks like mainly just Lucky Star, and Oh Edo Rocket (which is getting severely neglected by fansubbers, at 2 episodes subbed out of 16 so far; looks like it's time to find some raws). And Blue Dragon may not be the best series, but I've been watching that too.

Re:So?

[Glytch]

Lucky Star stopped being funny when it turned into the "Let's worship Aya Hirano!" show. Sure, she's talented, but the Konata-is-a-Haruhi-fan gags are getting real old, real fast.

Err, not that I watch either show. Cough.

No reports in the Japanese press?

[KNicolson]

I've just spent some time searching the Japanese language internet, and I cannot find a decent source for this - all the blogs seem to be quoting British sources for this. Has anyone got any hard facts?

Too few Wiis to notice?

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one that thinks that ~3M Wiis sold in a country with 127M people is not going to be noticable in terms of television viewing?

As much as I love my Wii, I find it very hard to believe that there's enough of them out there to really make a noticable difference.