WBC
(World Baseball Classic) final was held yesterday. As you may know, Japan again rose to the top!
Unfortunately, I didn't have a chance to watch the game on TV because it was held around noon in Japanese standard time, and I had a lot of works to do. However, I knew what's happened on the ground when it happened without watching TV at all -- thanks to so many tweets that told me the details about what was going on! Actually, there were so many twitter users who kept reporting the final game that my twitter timeline was filled up with the comments about WBC. The information was faster and deeper than those of other news sites.
The other day, I saw a TV program titled "Terebi No Korekara (Future of TV)." On that program, some people said TV will loose its power in Japan. They argued that Japanese family used to gather around a TV in a "chanoma (living room)" and have a chat about TV programs, but "gathering at chanoma" is vanishing since Japanese lifestyle is changing, thus TV's importance is also declining. I agree to the argument, but what I saw on Twitter was "virtual chanoma" in my opinion. Friends are gathering around a special event (in this case, WBC final) and chat about it -- in a virtual, not real, living room. Japanese TV stations could offer something to them, even though it's not through a TV screen, but through Internet.
In the next WBC (it will be held in 2013), more people will express their excitements on Twitter or similar web services. I hope "virtual chanoma" will prosper, and the Japanese national team win the victory again!
Dear Akihito-san,
Glad to see you are blogging in English! I'm also quite interested in the future of TV in Japan (as you know). I really think that Japanese media and other companies need to move faster to integrate Internet services or they will be left behind.
It will be interesting to see what happens over the next few years. It would be great if there were more Japanese services exported, rather than everything being imported. But that would require that Japanese companies have a slightly broader outlook. Not sure if that will happen.
投稿情報: Chris | 2009年4 月 8日 (水) 20:38