＜prologue＞
I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.
So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.
It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.
It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.
If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.
I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.
my blog’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳 | 団塊世代が雑学や面白い話を発信しています
my X’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多帳（@historia49）さん / X
There are many examples of popular TV station announcers turning into freelance announcers because of the high income, but only a handful of them succeed.
１．Reasons for station announcers to become freelance announcers
（１）Low income
Although station announcers earn far more than salaried employees at general companies, many people probably think that their income is low for a job that is quite hard.
If you become a freelance announcer, you become a “sole proprietor” who belongs to some office and receives work via the office, but the attraction is that the pay (income) for the same work is far greater.
Even if you are as popular and well-known as a top celebrity, the income of a bureau announcer is only a “salary.
（２）Bureau announcers cannot choose the programs they want to work on or the work they want to do.
Bureau announcers are employees of the company, so their work content is determined by the company. Even if you want to work on an economic program, you may be assigned to sports news, or vice versa.
When a new employee joins the company or a senior employee leaves, you may be transferred to a position outside of the announcements department.
２．Advantages and disadvantages of freelance announcing
（１）Advantages
This is the very reason why station announcers turn to freelance announcing.
① If you receive many job offers, your income will increase significantly.
②You can choose the programs and jobs you want to do.
However, I still think that success will only be achieved by station announcers with great ability or skill, as well as name recognition and popularity, such as Hitoshi Kusano, Kazuo Tokumitsu, Monta Mino, Tomoaki Ogura, Shinichi Hatori, Minami Tanaka, Mamasa Takahashi, Yumiko Udo, and Miku Natsume.
（２）Disadvantages
① Unstable income because there is not always a steady stream of work.
②Pressure from the TV station from which you come from, etc.
No TV station will use someone like former TBS announcer and current freelance announcer/TV personality Ms. Misato Ugaki, who has made headlines more for her ugly stories than for her popularity.
It was reported that the office of Ms. N, a freelance announcer who was the subject of ugly rumors from Ms. Misato Ugaki, pressured each TV station to ban her so that they would not use her.
Until March 2018, Ms. Misato Ugaki appeared daily on “Asa Chan! on a daily basis.
However, she suddenly dropped out and resigned just one year later.
③Freelance announcers are under pressure from the exclusive announcers of the TV stations they work for
TBS’s “Asa Chan! is a former announcer for Nippon Television Network Corporation. Asa-chan! has been on the air since March 2014, but she has also been the main anchor of her old TV station, NTV’s “Truth Report Bankisha! of her old home, NTV, as the main anchor since April 2013. I think her transition is an example of a successful one, but I think the pressure from a career announcer must be very difficult.
④The pressure of ratings competition with rival freelance announcers.
Former TV Asahi announcer Ayaka Ogawa served as a subcaster of “News Station” for seven and a half years before leaving the station in March 2019 to become a freelance announcer, serving as the main anchor of TBS’s “NEWS23” from June 2019.
However, the rating for the first episode of “NEWS 23” was 4.3%, but since the rating of NTV’s rival program “news zero”, of which former NHK’s Yumiko Udo is the main anchor, was 9.6%, some people are calling it a “catastrophic failure” and “disappointing”.
Similar to Ayaka Ogawa, another former Fuji Television network member, Ayako Kato, known as “Katopan,” is also being called a “disappointment.
For a “high salary,” which is estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars per year, she was appointed as the main anchor of Fuji Television’s evening news program “Live News it!
However, the ratings for this program, too, were the lowest among commercial news programs in the same time slot.
３．Problems on the part of TV stations
The TV stations took advantage of their past popularity and placed idol freelance announcers in the main news programs, but their abilities and skills were not up to the mark.
In this case, I believe that the TV stations’ failure was also due to the fact that they easily appointed “popular announcers” without assessing their abilities in order to “aim for viewer ratings.
Recently, it was reported that TBS made an unusual personnel selection of “two rank promotion” in order to prevent a popular TBS announcer, Shinichiro Azumi, from becoming a freelance announcer.
As one would expect, any company, not just a TV station, that deviates from its basic stance of trusting and taking good care of the employees it hires, is bound to expose to the outside world such an appalling state of affairs.
Nevertheless, there are many people who turned into freelance announcers but have since disappeared from television. Most of them were female announcers, but some were male announcers.
It can be said that they mistook their popularity when they were announcers for their own personal ability and popularity, forgetting that they were backed by the company (TV station), and “got carried away.
Isn’t this a good example of how “the winds of the world are cold” for those who change jobs?
４．The Issue of Pressure on Former SMAP Members Who Have Become Independent from the Johnny’s Office
In a different case from the announcer, it was reported that the Fair Trade Commission “cautioned” the former members of the popular idol group “SMAP,” which broke up three years ago, that “the Johnny’s agency pressured TV stations” not to allow them to appear on commercial TV programs. The Japan Fair Trade Commission has issued a “warning” to the three independent members of the Johnny’s agency for “pressuring TV stations not to allow them to appear on commercial TV. Come to think of it, the regular TV programs in which Kusanagi, Katori, and Inagaki had appeared were recently cancelled one after another, and I had felt that I had not seen them appearing on commercial TV programs at present.
It is surprising because Mr. Janie Kitagawa passed away just a few days ago, and many people commented that he was a good man who was devoted to working behind the scenes. But was this situation a sign of his strong will that “he would not allow the idol talents he had carefully nurtured to betray him and become independent?
