Japanese TV executive forgets the last 20 years
An executive with Japan's TBS station (which is Tokyo Broadcasting System, not the Turner one we have over here that shows 400 Friends reruns a day), must have been desperate for someone to receive the buck he was looking to pass.
Apparently there is somewhat of a crisis in the television industry over there right now. He blamed the decline in television viewing on other media: "There are outside factors at work. One is people watching TV on their cell phones where we can't track them, but the really big factor is the time people are spending on the Wii."
If this is true, why haven't Japanese television ratings been down for the last seven years, while the Playstation 2 has been out? After all, there are about 25 million of those over there-- surely someone in Japan thought to play theirs. And what of the 19 million Famicoms? How has television survived?
It's preposterous to think that 2 million Wiis hooked up to 2 million TVs have had a more widespread deleterious effect on TV watching than the enormous install base of the Playstation 2. This is just an example of grabbing something out of the news and blaming that for a problem. See also: Grand Theft Auto and real violence.
[Via NeoGAF; all sales estimates from VGChartz]
