Fuji TV’s parent company is projected to post a consolidated net loss of ¥20.1 billion in fiscal 2024, which ended in March — its first net loss since it became a holding company in 2008 — following a sex abuse scandal that has caused sponsors to suspend their commercials.
On Wednesday, Fuji Media Holdings downgraded its March projections from ¥9.8 billion in net profit for the business year due to impairment losses of ¥26 billion on Fuji TV's fixed assets.
The company also announced that President Osamu Kanemitsu, who was supposed to become chairman pending approval at the shareholders’ meeting in June, will be stepping down. Three other outside directors on the board will also resign.
“At the time of the last announcement, on March 27, I was thinking that I would step back and support the company from a supervisory standpoint,” Kanemitsu said Wednesday. “But after that, we received the report from the third-party probe,” which recommended setting a limit for how long a member can stay on the board and a retirement age for board members.
“There should be a system to limit how long one person can stay in power, and we thought that it should be introduced when I’m still in power,” he added, noting that the move was not because of opinions from the company’s investors.
Dalton Investments, a fund that is a significant investor in Fuji Media Holdings, had last month proposed an alternative list of possible board members — going against Fuji’s own lineup — in a call for a clean sweep.
On Wednesday, Fuji Media Holdings also submitted a report to the internal affairs ministry outlining measures to strengthen corporate governance and ensure the rights of its workers are protected, as they had been ordered to do following the release of the third-party report in March.
The prevention measures feature eight major reforms, including making the division of TV newscasters independent from other broadcasting departments within Fuji TV and with a coordinator system that would manage how they are chosen for TV shows.
The division currently reports to the programming department, which has meant that it was often personal relationships with producers and directors that determined the programs to which they would be assigned.
This corporate culture has been seen as one reason the former Fuji TV female announcer in the case of “sexual violence” inflicted by former TV star Masahiro Nakai — the incident that triggered the Fuji TV scandal in the first place — felt pressured to attend events with Nakai.
Fuji TV President Kenji Shimizu, who is set to become Fuji Media Holdings president, said Wednesday that the company must depart from the network’s slogan, “it’s not TV if it’s not fun,” saying that such culture had oversaturated the company to the extreme, resulting in an environment where “fun” was prioritized over other more important issues like the rights of staff and corporate compliance.
“It is a perverse notion that creating something interesting is most important even if it's at the expense of everything else,” said Shimizu. “It is very important to be interesting and fun, but it should not be built on any sacrifice."
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