Ever since the advent of that popular programming idea known as the "wide show" in the mid-1980s, so-called hard news and tabloid news have slowly merged into an alloy of informational reporting that defies easy categorization.
It's not just that the wide shows often have more pointed things to say about the political scandals that plague Nagata-cho; or that even stuffy old NHK occasionally stoops to covering show-biz celebrities. It's that there doesn't seem to be that much difference between the two any more.
This loss of distinction may have more to do with scale than with quality. You can watch news almost every hour of the day on the terrestrial broadcast stations, though it isn't always referred to as "news." A lot of prime-time variety shows have assumed newslike features -- anchors, reporters, commentators, up-to-the-minute topics -- even if they purport to be entertainment. The 6 o'clock news shows devote very little time to breaking stories any more. They mainly present long features about consumer goods and social trends that are directly tied in to product and service endorsements.