Dramas' Starting Hour
Most Japanese dramas never start exactly on the hour or half-hour mark. Instead, some episodes start at 8:58 p.m., while others start at 9:05 p.m. Before television ratings started to matter, episodes started exactly on the hour. Later, because of the aggressive TV ratings war, some stations decided to beat the competition by starting their shows a few minutes earlier. The theory behind this practice is that when a show ends a few minutes before the hour or half-hour, a viewer would start changing channels until they found one that wasn't showing any commercials. Similarly, if an episode runs a few minutes past the hour or half-hour, viewers are more likely to watch the next program because they missed the first few minutes of an episode on a different channel.
The exception to this trend is NHK, which continues to start their shows exactly on each hour or half-hour. Potential reasoning behind this is that because every other television station is constantly changing its start times, this strategy no longer holds the potential advantage over competition that it once did.
Read more about this topic: Japanese Television Dramas
Famous quotes containing the words starting and/or hour:
“And down in fathoms many went the captain and the crew;
Down went the owners—greedy men whom hope of gain
allured:
Oh, dry the starting tear, for they were heavily insured.”
—Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)
“Our job is now clear. All Americans must be prepared to make, on a 24 hour schedule, every war weapon possible and the war factory line will use men and materials which will bring, the war effort to every man, woman, and child in America. All one hundred thirty million of us will be needed to answer the sunrise stealth of the Sabbath Day Assassins.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)