MIPCOM Spotlight: TV Asahi

TV Asahi’s sports entertainment format vs KIDS pits a former top professional athlete against a kid champion of the same field.

“You would think that the former top professionals would have the upper hand, but amazingly the opposite is often true; the kid champions give the ex-pros an excruciatingly hard time in a serious match with real competition rules,” says Yuka Kakui, TV Asahi’s head of format development and sales in the international business department.

Another new offering is After Dark, which Kakui describes as an “avant-garde, documentary-style, talent-driven format.” It follows a big personality as they hit the town after dark by themselves. Experts Visiting Experts, which sees professionals from a certain field visit their counterparts in a foreign country, has already been a prime-time hit in Japan.

“Besides non-scripted formats, we are also looking to expand our scripted-format efforts going forward,” Kakui adds.