If someone mentions the television network TV Asahi to me, I immediately think about the anime "Sailor Moon", the long-running music program "Music Station" and then its base of operations in Roppongi Hills, Tokyo. The above is a picture of their souvenir shop. Looking at their Wikipedia and J-Wiki articles last night, I found out that the network had started its existence in 1957 trying to become an educational TV channel under the name of NET-TV or Nihon Educational Television Co., Ltd., perhaps along the same lines as NHK-3 is right now. Within a few years though, it was apparent that the idea wasn't going to work.
It took over a decade but NET-TV was able to transform into a regular commercial TV channel like Fuji-TV and TBS by 1973, and then on April 1 1977, NET-TV changed into TV Asahi.
Now, the reason that I've gone into this preamble about TV Asahi is that last night, I decided on a whim to plug in the term "mukashi no terebi"（昔のテレビ...old television） into the YouTube search engine, and I found this video of the first five minutes of a TV Asahi morning show called "Ohayo Terebi Asahi"（おはようテレビ朝日...Good Morning, TV Asahi）. Of course, with the vast majority of "Kayo Kyoku Plus" being about the nostalgic in music, I am also interested in the nostalgic in media so I was happy to see this quaint morning programming from 1986.
To further illustrate the depth of my geekiness, I've also been interested in the openings and closings of TV stations everywhere during their broadcast day. Now in the above video of "Ohayo Terebi Asahi" at around 4:18, a young keyboardist plays a little ditty and from one of the comments below the video, I found out that the ditty is a rendition of "Terebi Asahi no Uta" (The TV Asahi Song). Surely enough, this has been the sign-on and sign-off song for the network as you can see above for this 1978 sign-on.
"Terebi Asahi no Uta" has been the network song since it made that transition from NET-TV to TV Asahi in 1977. Usually I don't really cover such songs but I then saw the pedigree behind the creation of it. Famous lyricist Yu Aku（阿久悠）and famous composer Asei Kobayashi（小林亜星）were the brains and pens behind this cheerful number, and yup, there is a sung version by Peekaboo & Moondrops（ピーカブー & ムーン・ドロップス）which invites viewers and listeners to use the healing power of TV to get out of the doldrums.
I barely found anything about this group or groups although at least for Peekaboo, the "Kashi GET"（歌詞GET...Lyrics GET） website indicated that it provided a number of other songs, possibly theme tunes for other television shows. Perhaps Peekaboo & Moondrops are a loose conglomeration of studio singers. I don't really know, but "Terebi Asahi no Uta" has gotten me in the nostalgia part of my body with the singers and old-fashioned happy-go-lucky arrangement.
Those retro TV intros and such have an overwhelming nostalgic effect, despite not having experienced them at the time. I can't help but feel that they exude a quaint, happy atmosphere in stark contrast with the hectic bustle and looming menace of the present.
ReplyDeleteThe sequence for this CBC TV sign-off from 1992 is spiffy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gu7GC0MfM9A
I never did locate that show opening that I was looking for awhile ago. Wading through a large list of TV shows to maybe find that one intro isn't really high on my list of priorities. That could take hours. Should I chance upon it someday, I'll let you know.
Hello, Michael.
DeleteThere's nothing like some calming bossa nova to gently wake you up.
Fuji-TV had some circus-like CG for its opening that REALLY wanted to wake you up. It's kinda like having that overly-caffeinated cruise director on a ship pushing you to have fun. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P4371_vLxc
Reminiscent of CG showcases used to hype the PlayStation and Saturn consoles back in the day. :P A lot of angular and cylinder polygons. Wonder what computer was used to create those Fuji-TV sequences.
ReplyDeleteI've got no idea which computer was behind that. It now looks all so quaint.
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