Air Dates: March 11th to the 15th on Netflix, March 18th to the 22nd on Hokkaido TB
Also goes by the name of 'Stay Tuned', the series had a total of five 43 minute episodes
Main Cast:
Kyoko Yoshine as Hanako Yukimaru... newbie reporter who constantly messes up
Hiroko Iijima as Hajime Yamane... another new reporter who is seemingly perfect but....
Atsuwo Ohuchi as Heizo Hasegawa... the supervisor of the TV newsroom
Kanako Miyashita as Maki Hanae... new news anchor in training
Takuro Osada as Hayato Kitagami... yet another newbie in the production department
Taisei Shima as Tetsutaro Fukube... new hire in the sales department
Hikaru Takihara as Seiichi Tachibana... new technician
Ayumu Saito as Mamoru Jogasaki... TV station main director
Kimiko Jitsukawa as Reiko Kurenai... veteran newscaster
Hitoshi Fujio as Yosuke Furuya... weatherman
Ken Yasuda as Katori... rival from the HGT station
Yo Oizumi as Kanbara... local farmer
Shinya Kawano as Ogura... director of the newsroom who never stops eating
.... and so many more with minor roles, hugest cast I've ever seen.
This was just a five episode drama so this and the next recap will be the final ones. Hope I can remember what happened as I wrote the above posts a month ago and watched the final two shows three weeks ago, at times I can be extremely lazy at writing up longish recaps. But will have to change that bad habit as I'll be needing to do more of them now that this blog is just dedicated to them along with actresses and films but am looking forward to the challenge.
At the conclusion of episode three Hajime had received a call from the station while he was out having a team dinner with the other five rookies who had started at the HHTV station at the same time. The call was because of a story that just broke involving the farmer advocate Kanbara and how he may have swindled government funds for his Sprout Mind agency. That agency had been helping out the farmers in Hokkaido who had fallen on hard times. His team had shown them better ways to grow their crops, donated some equipment and for the most part were a huge help to the farmers.
Hajime had done a special feature about Kanbara's quest to help his fellow farmers, that special was well received and made him the wunderkind of the station. But with this new story about Kanbara the station began looking at Hajime differently, he even got transferred from being a reporter to the Information Department though it was said it wasn't because of Kanbara's special. Hajime naturally thought otherwise and he couldn't blame his superiors for moving him, he began to doubt his talents and wondered if there were signs he had missed doing the story on Kanbara.
Hajime began thinking back about the interviews he did with Kanbara and realized he had missed many suspicious signs. Such as the expensive watch Kanbara was wearing, Hajime checked the price for it which was well over $2,000. Plus Kanbara had been driving a new SUV for his personal use, with his salary Hajime thought there was no way Kanbara could have afforded such an expensive vehicle. Hajime rightfully had self doubts about himself, a veteran reporter would have noticed those signs but he didn't give things like that a second glance, much more on it in the next post.
But for now that's the secondary story as there's an impending huge shakeup at HHTV. They're a sister station of a major one in Tokyo, HHTV creates their own local shows plus have their own newscast but the dramas and films come from the Tokyo station. And they're not happy with the ratings for the local shows as they're constantly losing to their rivals HGT, sometimes known as Star TV/Himaru. It's approaching 'sweeps week' and the Tokyo station has given their little sister an ultimatum, get the local shows ratings above 8% or they will be cancelled!
This naturally didn't sit well with anyone in the station save for a few members of the executive board. That's led by Jogasaki who I thought was a good guy up until this show but he proved to be anything but as he really just cares about the bottom line and nothing else. But the HHTV employees are gung-ho about this challenge, the shows they produce are always quite interesting but how can they make more viewers aware of that? First on the chopping block for shows will be 'Kirakira Information' which is the show Hajime had just been transferred to. They currently have an average rating of 6.2%, it's going to be tough for them to raise that number to 8%. Especially as how Hanako has just been moved to the program to the dismay of Hajime, but even though Hanako is so incompetent at times seems she's also a lucky charm.
Seems the citizens on Hokkaido are a low key type of people, things like food programs and local news interest them so much though the HHTV ratings don't back that up. First special during sweep week for the 'Kirakira Information' show is to focus on ramen, it also happens to be ramen week. The information team heads out to local eateries to feature unique ramen dishes that were being created, seemed like a blockbuster idea but HHTV weren't the only station with that thought.
Their rival HGT is also having special shows for ramen week and for some odd reason end up at the restaurants just before HHTV arrives. It was never discussed but had the impression that there was a mole at HHTV who was feeding HGT their plans, so often in the five shows they seemed to be on the scene first though HHTV usually was the only station with the scoop. Perhaps five episodes wasn't enough time to have another subplot like that one.
Though the ratings for that first sweeps show rose it wasn't high enough, 'Kirakira Information' still couldn't beat HGT overall but they did beat them for a few minutes here and there. That continued on for the rest of the week and it's down to the final show which will need a blockbuster rating to average 8% for the week. The team had an interesting show lined up, as mentioned Hokkaido viewers love watching food shows and that's what HHTV served them. But once again they weren't the only station on the scene as so wasn't HGT who arrived before they did, still think there was a mole working for HGT. We don't see him too often but the head of the station is Katori, seems his main goal in life is to crush HHTV and put them out of business.
Hope I didn't end up messing up the order of events, don't think so but wrote half of this up yesterday and after a break you tend to lose that tract you were on. As you can see above the 'Kirakira Information' show will be filming their final weekly show at the Ezoya department store, they're one of HHTV's bigger sponsors though they came close to pulling out from an incident that happened in the previous recap. The 'Kirakira Information' airs at 4:00 pm and it's important that they get high ratings as it leads into the 5:00 news hour which has just changed it's name to 'Evening Big Bang', they too are under pressure to increase ratings or they may also be a show that is axed.
By agreement HHTV has allowed their rival HGT to air their segment first, they'll each have 15 to 20 minutes of air time and guess what the theme for both segments are? If you chose food then you are correct as the citizens of Hokkaido probably can't view enough of those shows. The department store was holding a huge food expo which had drawn quite a horde of food fans, Hajime had been put in charge of the show as far as lining up vendors went. But once again it seems HGT got a copy of their schedule as a nightmare was quickly developing for HHTV.
All of the vendors that Hajime had lined up were being visited by the HGT reporter, no viewer would want to see HHTV copying their rival again. Hajime and his team dashed around the store looking for new ideas but there were very few of them as so many vendors have sold out of their product, just a few minutes remained until airtime. But of course there has to be a hero(ine) who once again was Hanako, she had visited a vendor earlier in the day which sold some delicious Komo-kaburi and that's the vendor the team will focus on.
HGT got wind of that, just before HHTV began airing the producer of HGT's show ran over to the vendor and bought up most of their product. It appeared their rivals would once again foil HHTV's plan but to the rescue came Hanako. She had bought several boxes of Komo-kaburi to bring home, very reluctantly she gave the food back to the vendor so the special could be filmed. Hanako saved the day with her act as all of the customers savored the food to no end which was aired live on TV, the ratings may not top HGT but HHTV did win in this mini battle.
Above was the first we saw of the station's chief operating officer who is Suzuki. He seemed like a bit of a meek man who too often followed the advice of the board and especially Jogasaki. He's reading the final ratings report for the 'sweeps week', it had been leaked out that the 'Kirakira Information' show nor the newscast following it averaged 8% for the week, are these two show about to be shown the door?
Later on that day an emergency meeting was called, one that was led by Suzuki who though meek has usually took the side of local programming and his faithful employees. Which is why it was such a shock when he announced that the 'Kirakira Information' and 'Evening Big Bang' shows that aired from 4:00 until 6:00 pm would be cancelled, there's even a possibility that their local 8:00 pm show would also be on the chopping block. Of course the employees were in an uproar over the announcement, didn't the station care about the viewers of Hokkaido as shows from Tokyo were lined up to take their place.
During this uproar Jogasaki and his group stood off to the side smiling, he can finally air old TV dramas which to him will show a profit. But not so fast with your thinking is what Suzuki told his employees, he has another announcement which may please most people. His plan is to fuse together the 'Kirakira Information' and 'Evening Big Bang' shows into a two hour one, still focusing on local events but with some different twists, Jogasaki was furious with the plan as he hadn't been told anything of it, his complaints fell on deaf ears tough as Suzuki does have the final say on station matters. For now that is as Jogasaki won't be taking this new decision lying down and you'll learn more on that in the final recap.
Shouldn't have taken so long to write up these last two recaps but will be changing that in the future. Know I'll be doing many more recaps for this new so what I do now is watch an episode, then write one of these up and put it aside until others are going to be published. Have been doing that for the '3-Nen A Gumi' series and those first five recaps will be coming up soon. One more show to go in this drama, do enjoy shorter series but it may have helped if this had another 2-3 episodes, recap for the final show is the post below this.
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