Japan’s top commercial broadcaster, Nippon TV, topped online platform TVer’s Q3 rankings with its Wed night cop comedy, closely followed by TBS, which took five of the top 20 spots for the quarter against Nippon’s three.

Japanese commercial broadcaster Nippon TV’s Wed-night cop/comedy drama, Police in a Pod (Hakozume: Tatakau! Koban Joshi), emerged as the most-watched programme on domestic online catch-up service, TVer, with 19.01 million total views from July-Sept this year, according to audience measurement agency Video Research’s latest “Programme Playback Ranking” report.

The quarterly report measured total videos viewed on TVer, set up in Oct 2015 by five Japanese commercial stations – Nippon TV, TV Asahi, TBS, TV Tokyo and  Fuji TV. 

TVer’s highest audience was 19.79 million total views from April to June this year for TBS’ Friday-night romantic comedy, Rikokatsu (aka How to Get A Divorce for the Whole Family).

The latest report, released by TVer in early Nov, tracked videos played between 1 July and 30 September. 

Drama led, with 17 of the top 20 slots. The rest were variety shows.

Nippon TV aired the nine-episode Police in a Pod at 10pm (7 July to 15 Sept) with an average 11.4% TVR (source: Video Research, Kanto Region). Two special episodes aired in August.

Police in a Pod, based on Miko Yasu’s 2017 manga series Hakozume: Koban Joshi no Gyakushu, stars Erika Toda (Scarlet) as a detective and Mei Nagano (Ichikei’s Crow: The Criminal Court Judges) as her rookie partner. TVer said the series was watched by all age groups.

TVer’s second most-watched show was Tokyo Broadcasting System Television’s (TBS) medical drama, Tokyo MER: Mobile Emergency Room, with 18.65 million views. Tokyo MER is about two doctors with opposing ideologies who become involved in a much larger political game. The 11-episode series garnered an average 13.6% TVR (Video Research, Kanto region) during its broadcast on TBS from July to September this year. 

TVer’s top variety shows for the quarter were long-running Wednesday’s Downtown (since 2014) from TBS, followed by TV Asahi’s London Hearts (since 1999). In third place was Fuji TV’s Hitoshi Matsumoto no Sake no Tsumami ni naru Hanashi (April 2021). All three are still on air.

Variety shows, traditionally favoured by men, had for the first time more than 80% female viewers for Nippon TV’s The First – BMSG Audition 2021. The talent search, which aired from 2 April to 13 Aug this year, ranked fifth in the latest chart for variety programming.

The six-year old TVer streaming app, which captured 16% of all premium video streaming for the first eight months of this year (source: Media Partners Asia/AMPD Research), leverages local free-to-air dramas, variety, news and sports. The ad-supported TVer offers 400 catch-up titles and hit 40 million downloads in August 2021, with monthly active users of 34.8 million in July 2021.

Published in ContentAsia November 2021 Magazine