Nippon TV’s Yuriko Nakamura on Exporting Japanese Creativity

Last week, Alpha TV in Greece launched its local version of Nippon TV’s Mother. The acclaimed Japanese drama has become Asia’s best-selling scripted format, with 11 remakes. Yuriko Nakamura, in the global sales and licensing division at Nippon TV, talks to TV Formats about how the Japanese media group is navigating the global format business across scripted and unscripted.

TV FORMATS: What gains have you seen in your international business over the last 12 months?
NAKAMURA: Despite ongoing budget constraints and cautious spending among buyers, our proven unscripted hits, such as Silent Library and Old Enough!, along with acclaimed scripted series like Mother and Woman, have continued to secure new deals. This success has also enabled buyers to feel more confident taking a chance on our fresh, new formats.

This momentum has allowed us to take a more proactive approach to our own format development and business structure. The launch of our new in-house unit, Gyokuro Studio, symbolizes our active move to bring innovative and diverse content to the global market, with its newly developed formats, Mega Catch and Secret Little Assistant, debuting at this year’s MIPCOM.

TV FORMATS: What’s driving your international business in terms of genres?
NAKAMURA: It’s a real mix, particularly in unscripted. On one hand, networks are increasingly seeking familiar and cost-effective content, which is where our classic titles come in. In Asia, for example, studio-based game shows like Silent Library remain attractive for buyers, as they can be mass-produced efficiently within a single stage. We also continue to see strong demand for reality shows, as proven by the local adaptations of Old Enough! in Mongolia in 2024 and Canada in 2024 and 2025.

On the other end of the spectrum, crazy game shows built on unique premises continue to be popular. We’re seeing great traction with new formats like Red Carpet Survival, which was just renewed by Prime Video Italy, and our new format Ants is getting a lot of traction globally. While production costs are always a consideration, we’ve found that buyers today are more focused on a format’s unique meaning and cultural relevance than on budget alone.

TV FORMATS: How do you see the scripted formats business at present, and how are you positioning yourself there?
NAKAMURA: We see that audiences want more than just a fresh story; they are craving a cultural moment, including high-impact limited series, which is a sweet spot for us. Our strength is creating scripted titles that keep audiences guessing. The Hot Spot is a perfect example. It sparked a huge, real-time conversation within Japan and other parts of East Asia. It builds on our dramas like Mother.

Another scripted format business success that was a first for us in 2025 was the remake of our Mother and Woman in Saudi Arabia, produced by Turkey’s Medyapim, created to air on MBS and stream widely on Shahid. The Turkish remakes of Mother and Woman were already a global phenomenon, but we have now elevated the reach of those scripted formats, aligning perfectly with Saudi Arabia’s current strategy of robust investment in premium content.

TV FORMATS: What are the biggest challenges in bringing Asian creativity to the global market? And how are you approaching those challenges?
NAKAMURA: It’s always been challenging to understand what gets viewers outside of Asia excited, and even with social media, only a handful of trends make it across the ocean: “Brat summer,” for instance, never really landed in Japan. But we now have AI tools that can dig deep into what content audiences are glued to in every corner of the world and translate that into actionable insights for our formats in under a minute. That’s been a game-changer.

Another challenge is a structural one: in Japan, some unscripted formats originate from seasonal or one-off special programs rather than weekly series. The key challenge for us is to prove that our formats can work as a series with a compelling narrative arc that builds toward a big finale. This requires us to not only bring creative ideas to the market but also to sell with a clear, long-term vision.

TV FORMATS: What are your goals for your international business in the year ahead?

NAKAMURA: In addition to using our network slots as a sandbox for innovative new formats (through Gyokuro Studio, our new unscripted studio with a global focus), we’re leveraging AI to understand underlying viewer needs behind the commissioning briefs and past performance of titles. We then use that data to translate crazy new ideas of our creators into future global hits and to find hidden gems in the library that Japanese viewers loved and could create a viral moment on Reels today.