When home-appliance manufacturer Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. announced earlier this month that it was renaming itself Panasonic Corp., the company said it was doing so in order to unify its various brand names, which, in addition to Panasonic, included Matsushita and National. This strategy would help the company's image abroad as it refocuses on foreign consumers, most of whom have never heard of Matsushita or National.
In Japan the two brand names have nostalgic connotations, and discarding both while retaining Panasonic seems to be a way of letting go of the past. In December the company announced that it would soon be marketing a new television set with a built-in YouTube capability, meaning there would be a button on the remote that enables viewers to directly call up the YouTube Web site on their sets and watch the hundreds of thousands of videos posted there.
The age of Internet-ready television is already upon us, further eroding the traditional broadcast model, which itself seems stuck in the past. Every year around this time, the media scrutinizes the ratings of NHK's New Year's Eve song contest, "Kohaku Utagassen," which is still the most-viewed program on Japanese television. The ratings, however, have dropped significantly since the 1980s, a development usually cited as evidence that the show, and NHK by association, is losing relevance.