Hey everyone - Episode 23 of The Speakeasy is now live!
In this episode of The Speakeasy, Yuki Akehi, who heads global PR and marketing at Nippon TV, joins Joe and Gabriella to unpack how a 70-year-old Japanese broadcaster is building for a global audience. She covers how its formats travel, how the new studios are creating content from scratch, and why being first to try something new is part of the company's DNA.
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Snippets from The Speakeasy
How Old Enough went from a Japanese staple to a global format
Old Enough has been running in Japan for over 30 years, but it took a Netflix release to show how far it could travel. Yuki explains that the idea to push it overseas began when a colleague returned from New York and reported that everyone there loved the show but couldn't quite understand it. When Netflix reached out to stream it as a ready-made across 190 countries at once, the team saw their hunch confirmed. Audiences were split, with some seeing the children's errands as a charming way to raise independent kids and others finding them intolerable, but Yuki says those reactions largely cancelled each other out once people saw how happy the children were. That reaction opened the door for Nippon TV to relaunch it as a format with a refreshed "bible". Versions have followed in Canada, now on its third season, and Mongolia, with more regions in discussion.
The same universality sits behind The Hotspot, the drama series (that I personally am a huge fan of!). On the surface, it's a very Japanese story, set in a small town near Mount Fuji and involving aliens. Yuki points out that its heart is a midlife-crisis office worker whose younger colleagues sneer at him, which could just as easily play in Spain or Germany. Her point is that the team wasn't writing it with foreign remakes in mind, but a strong concept will find its own way across borders.
Building formats from zero with the world in mind
Not every show can become a format, and with viewers now savvy from years of YouTube and TikTok, Nippon TV decided to build formats from scratch rather than rely on adapting existing hits. That's the thinking behind Gyrokuro Studios, headed by Ken Akiyama, which launched with a brief to create formats with the global market in mind from the start. In a little over a year, Yuki says, his team has produced ten brand new formats, all aired on Nippon TV first to see how audiences respond before being taken to clients around the world. One of them, Majority Rules, is already attracting interest from European studios. Whichever route a format takes to market, Yuki's advice is to stay flexible with partners: local producers know their audiences best, and the best ideas often come back from the people adapting them.
Viral Pocket is Nippon TV's newest arena, an in-house production team built around the way people now watch: vertically, on their phones. It came from younger colleagues who saw the boom in micro dramas and the opportunity to integrate sponsor content into stories audiences actually want to watch. The team makes special drama series and semi-reality shows with a sponsor's product woven in, alongside micro dramas with short episodes and a cliffhanger every time.
Because it builds vertical-first rather than adapting horizontal broadcast content, its expertise is spreading through the company, with the team advising drama producers on how to clip vertical scenes and add text for social. Yuki says there will be more to announce next year.
Why being first to try new things is in the DNA
For Yuki, the appetite to experiment starts with the people. She began her career in the sports department, doing international live transmission of the Olympics, the Super Bowl, tennis and PGA golf, where her superiors taught her that knowing the sport wasn't enough and that you also had to understand the technical side.
That mindset still runs through the business, she says, where being curious and wanting to do something nobody has done before come with the territory. Internal competition is fierce, and a show only gets the green light if it will attract audiences and be sellable to sponsors.
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