Jme.TV (pronounced Jay-mee), the exclusive North American streaming provider of NHK content, will offer a fourth channel exclusively for sumo content just in time for the May tournament. Two hours of live sumo will be available via the NHK World Premium channel and repeats of that sumo action (with English audio) will be streamed four times daily on the new channel. The service is described the image to the right. Tachiai welcomes this development from NHK Cosmomedia and their NHK parent company, unreservedly.
In the past, JapanTV was the only legitimate source of live sumo coverage in North America. That service required a cable subscription. In my experience, if you wanted TV in High Definition, that required extra bundles beyond the basic cable. Ultimately, I would be left subsiziding 500 channels I’d never watch just for one show or one channel.
JME was launched this year to replace the old JapanTV option with a streaming capability, direct to consumers at $25/mo. This effectively shutdown JapanTV at the beginning of April 2024. I don’t use Roku or Amazon Fire and I don’t watch via apps on my phone but those options are available. I have heard some users have complained about the fact that the new service is streamed and is not their usual cable package. To those who complain, I ask how many of their three remote controls do they use? And do they hate it when luddites like myself come over to visit and push the wrong “ON” button on the wrong remote to turn on the TV? (My daughter usually has fix my parents’ cable set up after I destroy it.) All of those remotes and all of those buttons when you probably use five, max.
There are three streaming channels as well as an “on-demand” option for various Japanese television series. Two of the channels are in Japanese and the third is the “NHK World” service that we were most familiar with. Jme Select is NHK content shifted for North American timezones. NHK Premium is Japanese with some programming (including live sumo) having English audio available. NHK World is…well..NHK World, the NHK’s English language channel. Until recently that had been available via broadcast in the MHZ networks. The new, sumo only channel is a welcome development!
For cord-cutters like myself, this has been quite the encouraging development, especially since the content is AD-FREE. We will continue to advocate for more sumo coverage. That case will be made easier with rapid uptake of the new streaming service. Let’s face it, if they see impressive viewer numbers on the exclusive sumo channel it’s my hope that they expand viewership to Juryo and the lower divisions and maybe even “off-season” special events, like retirement ceremonies and Jungyo.
I encourage viewers to comment here with their unfiltered reviews of the service. I started watching on senshuraku in March. Senshuraku offers 2.5 hours of live coverage which is a bit more than the 2 hours of day-to-day coverage. That is enough to watch makuuchi, no VPN or illicit stream needed. I’ve been a casual viewer of the service in the off-season, mostly of the news. But I have definitely found a few Japanese dramas and comedies to watch as I try to improve my own language skills. There have been a few bugs and glitches, generally quickly resolved. Earlier this week, the schedule for one of the channels was unavailable in the usual location but that was fixed. What has been your experience so far?
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It’s stupid and shortsighted that they relentlessly crush the viewing methods that are actually viable for foreigners to get into sumo, and the replacement is supposed to be $25 per month to watch unedited 2-hour broadcasts at specific times that they are “airing’ them. They should just recognize that they aren’t going to get short-term cash from us, let us watch it how we want, and view it as a way to grow global appreciation of the sport.
“They should just recognize that they aren’t going to get short-term cash from us, let us watch it how we want, and view it as a way to grow global appreciation of the sport.”
That sounds like a, “just take the L” attitude and I don’t buy it because none of us, not even you, would actually take that L and be happy with it. On a personal level, I would be very upset if someone copied articles that I wrote and created another blog. I think most people would feel the same way about their content. Imagine if you were watching “America’s Funniest Home Videos” and all of a sudden, you see your own home movies on there, taken without your permission. Obviously you would be upset if you created something but someone else cashed in. They have their right to protect it.
Many of us grew up in the Napster era, though, when we were just sharing files and sharing content freely without giving it much thought. But they put in the money to create the videos and create the streams, I don’t understand why we would be so cheap/ketchi about the “short-term cash”. It’s $25, dude. That’s, like, not even a tank of gas. Hell, lately it’s not even lunch at any of the restaurants near work. For that, I get access to more than just sumo. And I’ve been enjoying it. But you do you.
I for one have no problem with people who think that watching sumo isn’t worth paying for. However, I do have a problem with people who think that and also believe they’re entitled to being catered to anyway. But of course these are invariably people who also fail to understand that “global appreciation of the sport” isn’t a Kyokai objective to begin with, so it’s pointless to expect reasonable opinions.
It’s not that it’s not “worth paying for” – it’s that it IS worth being appreciated by more people and under current circumstances it will never be. It is A) not in a format that the vast, vast majority of people who might be interested in sumo will ever get into and B) a $25 subscription to a single streaming service represents a firm commitment to something that most people who might otherwise like sumo will never make. People want to be able to be casually into something. I personally would never have gotten into sumo without YouTube edits, and I’m far from alone in this.
They can have a lot of people interested in sumo and following the sport, bringing prestige both to sumo as a sport and to Japan as a nation and a culture, or they can limit it to Japanese nationals + a handful of extremely hardcore foreign fans, because they want to get a few thousand people to pay for something. You prefer the latter, and it’s shortsighted.
Your analogy about your blog is inapplicable, because your blog is easily accessible and in a convenient format. Sumo is not, and therefore if it wants more than a handful of foreign fans it needs to allow people to edit and redistribute it in a useable format.
A) If the monstrosity that is American Football coverage is your guide stick, I disagree. Alcohol, commercial breaks and penalties is literally the entire weekend and millions watch it. I’d love to see something new, that isn’t Golf, or Soccer or (dear God, No) Spring Football. There’s whole channels dedicated to those.
B) I know people who pay a heck of a lot more for a cable subscription to watch one show. I was one of them. Fortunately, there are three channels of content on this stream. If it’s not for you, it’s not for you. That’s fair.
“Your analogy about your blog is inapplicable, because your blog is easily accessible and in a convenient format.”
I don’t know what analogy you’re talking about. The analogy I used was whether you would like to see your videos on America’s Funniest Home Videos without your approval? If your content was used by others to generate income FOR THOSE PEOPLE you would have a problem with it. Please address that point.
Not necessarily what the hard core fans would want, but it’s a step i guess? Will work for some people i hope and is an improvement. It is frustrating that the efforts to spread the popularity of sumo to non japanese people coincides with efforts to crush the access for current fans that want to see all divisions and are already hooked. It sometimes feels like they just want people to come to see sumo when they visit japan rather than develop…full on sumo fever. I choose to look at this as a step in the right direction. Go Sumo!
Is it available in Europe also?
You can find out what are the options for watching NHK World Premium in Europe from https://nhkworldpremium.com/en/apply
I don’t think so but we can certainly hope it expands. I had thought there was a European option for NHK World Premium? I will look into that.
When there are no legitimate methods to access it, it makes sense that people go to the illicit streams. Which is why I really hope this is just a first step.
“coincides with efforts to crush the access for current fans that want to see all divisions and are already hooked. It sometimes feels like they just want people to come to see sumo when they visit japan rather than develop…full on sumo fever.”
I don’t think it coincides with anything. They’ve been enforcing their copyrights for decades. I used to watch Araibira and they shut him down and chased him to every new platform he’d go to. If we enjoy something, I mean really enjoy it, I think we’re willing to pay for it. I sure am. The NFL and other sports protect their content. It’s just frustrating that the TV channels pay for those things that I’m not interested in. It’s always a bit funny to see the local journalists shilling for the Commanders. I roll my eyes and look forward to the dohyo matsuri.
I hate to get all legalistic on you, and without commenting on the moral implications, I do not believe that there is any enforceable U.S. copyright under these facts because they would have to first register the broadcast with the U.S. Copyright Office before issuing any cease-and-desist or filing a lawsuit. See https://www.wiley.law/alert-Copyright-Registration-Is-A-Prerequisite-to-Suing-for-Infringement. P.S. I already have NHK with my cable package, but I want to watch the action live which only leaves one option.
You have NHK World (in English) on your cable package? To be honest, you can get that for free without it. That’s been streaming for for quite a while.
YouTube is not a Federal Court. It’s a private platform and they handle such claims outside of court. I am not sure whether NHK Cosmomedia or NHK itself has taken those steps but as far as I know that is not necessary to make a claim with YouTube. So I am not agreeing with your statement about “any enforceable US copyright”.
Under U.S. law, web hosts are entirely immune from liability, so YouTube and other sites could kill it or leave it at their option without risk either way.
As some smart rogue streamers have realized, if you offer some of your own commentary or criticism, then it likely falls under fair use. In my experience as counsel to copyright holders, takedown requests are often refused if a viable defense is presented. They just direct you to court.
More importantly, so happy Tsurigisho stayed up! A little unfair to blame someone for being injured. I’ll be watching live and the saved NHK highlights the next day.
Great content on this page as always. Thank you.
Well, YouTube chooses to kill them. Twitter does not seem to go after them, maybe since they don’t bother Elon’s plane.
Frankly, I thought pretty much all of the sumo streamers fell in the fair use category. They all have substantial content of their own in the videos, from commentary to graphics. Jason, for example, has his own commentary but got hit by YouTube on his Tochinoshin promotion video. As I understand it, a Georgian outfit claimed it…not NHK…and he lost control of his own content. YouTube is a hot mess.
I am always surprised by the size of the Tsurugisho fan base. That fact alone should give the NHK comfort in the size of the sumo market. But NHK has to monetize in order to fund the service. But they don’t do ads and the service is independent, not funded by YouTube subscriber numbers.
Happy US people, how much options you can chose to get the full load of sumo! Though your media world seems ummmh… challenging. Poor little me can watch only by NHK World via internet and the abema YT-Stream just when it happens. In japanese of course. Aaah, that delight :)
Unfortunately, at this point it’s not the full load of sumo. The lower divisions are still unavailable. I’m surprised if there’s not another option in Europe and Asia. Back in the TV Japan days, I thought there was an option but Herouth just told me that they seem to have shut it off. Hopefully this option will expand!
Yeah, TV Japan and its European counterpart JSTV were shut down at nearly the same time. The current plan for Europe appears to be to put NHK World Premium on any existing platform that will have it. For Germany, the operator search mentioned in another comment shows two internet streaming providers I’ve never heard of before, both of which seem to specialize in transmitting TV channels that target international audiences (international as seen from each channel’s location of origin, that is).
In any case, sumo below makuuchi hasn’t been legally available outside Japan since…2015 or so? Ever since the Kyokai shut down their brief partnership with UStream (which offered overseas access for the low, low price of $125 per basho). I wouldn’t expect that to change anytime soon, there’s just no viable market for it. When Natto was still available on Youtube, the access numbers for his makuuchi videos always dwarfed the juryo and makushita ones, and that was among people inclined to watch an outsized amount of sumo. In the general population, I doubt even 5% of those who are part of the theoretical target audience for makuuchi sumo would also watch juryo, let alone the unpaid ranks.
I’ve had JME since it went live on about Day 11 or 12 of the Haru Basho. Despite bugs and growing pains, it basically works. I use the Apple TV box with the JME app to view on my big screen TV. The biggest drawback with JME is no DVR as we had with TV Japan so we could watch it at our convenience. But any digital signal can be recorded if you can buy the right equipment… I won’t be able to test JME’s new sumo schedule for the Natsu Basho since I’m in Tokyo to attend in person. I’ll have to wait until Nagoya to do my own test.
Does Apple TV run on an Apple computer in the back end? I don’t have a Mac anymore. I’ve got a desktop PC and Windows has an App for gaming which would basically act like a DVR for me…without the seamless ability to back up or pause and restart live content. But that might be there…I’ll need to look into it. Basically, my TV is my monitor for the PC. Skyrim is beautiful on the big screen.
No – it’s a standalone device
It’s actually how I stream NHK World, via their app (which has some technical problems, but is of course free with plenty of on-demand programming, and has improved over the years)
Although, if you are outside the Apple ecosystem, it might be worth seeing if Jme has also developed a Google (Android?) TV app in the Google Play store since there are plenty of devices that support it
Live streaming is NOT what I want. I want to see mostly Makuuchi and
not take more than 30 minutes/day. The bootleg channels did provide that.
I’m happy to pay say $100/year for this. If the Kyokai manage to shut down
all the bootlegs, I will most likely stop following Sumo. Who benefits?
Ahahaha! “Happy to pay.” $100/year for content? I don’t think they would be that desperate for your attention, frankly. They sure would not benefit. They would LOSE money to provide the tailored content you desire. Frankly, that’s laughable. What labor is worth $100/year? Who benefits by not offering you what you demand? The person who spends their time providing content to someone who will actually value their investment and labor. Rather than waste time working for peanuts, they pour their time into providing content for those who will pay more.
I don’t know where your assumption comes from that, 100$/year wouldn’t be a valid pricing point. Let’s make it 120$, then it’s 20$ per basho. Afaik Natto is loading up his videos like 2h after the broadcast finishes, so the time investment in creating those summaries isn’t outrageous. Also afaik NHK world still has the clips of the Makuuchi bouts available for free on its website.
Just to give you a perspective, I used to have an nba abo, which gave me access to any game live and on demand for the whole season including play offs including nbatv and whatever content they produced. I believe I could even choose between the official broadcast and the home team one. That was for less than 200€/year. I stopped that a little while back, due to lack of time&me sleeping when my teams play.
If the sumo kyokai had any interest that would neither be unreasonable pricing nor an unreasonable product. As Asashosakari pointed out, the vast majority of people don’t have the time to watch live streams and time/interest for lower divisions also dwindles dramatically.
I think for NHK sumo isn’t important enough to create/provide a technical platform for it, outside of what they are doing already. Hosting some free clips is a whole different thing than a pay per view platform that operates internationally.
The problem is not the price tag of 100$, but that a proper channel for distribution is missing. Somehow I doubt they would trust YouTube with that.
2 hours of work each night, 15 days for 30 hours of work…$20 is paying someone $0.67/hr for their labor. As I said, I think that’s an outrageous price point, even with your bonus of $20/year. And that doesn’t take into consideration the front end labor costs of creating his graphics packages and updating them each tournament, as well as whatever process he created to get those videos ready in such a short time. People seriously undervalue the labor involved.
So it’s 67cent per hour from every paying customer. And yes, there will be some sort of consumption tax very likely, there will be cost for traffic, for whatever technical platform is used, and yes, producing the original content costs something, sumo kyokai likely wants some share etc.
With 10k subscribers that would be 1.2m gross earnings, probably not interesting for anyone. With 100k it might already look different. What numbers are realistic?
It’s completely valid for the kyokai and NHK to say they don’t care about international fans or growing an international fan base, but if you do that 20$/basho is a completely valid price point. A lot of people would probably expect much less, because not everyone lives in the US. We are not talking full access, but a 20-30min daily wrap.
It’s very possible that the international audience for sumo isn’t large enough to specifically target, but that isn’t the fault of the people who would like a reasonably priced product for casual sumo fans.
You argue that 20$/basho aren’t enough in an article about an option to stream a vast variety of NHK content for just 25$/month.
Show me 1 subscriber, much less 10000. You’re assuming scale that isn’t here. Bottom line, if Natto’s labor is worth $0.67/hour to you, I am sure he thanks you very much for it.
As Savaros correctly notes, it’s a silly calculation to divide the cost for a single subscriber by the hours of labor involved. That’s like saying the writer of a novel that took them a year makes $19.99 per year because that’s the price of a paperback. I don’t know the numbers of people who voluntarily donate to our various English language youtubers, podcasters, etc. but it’s not trivial. For what it’s worth, Chris Gould has 72K subscribers (sure, vast majority don’t pay) and he doesn’t even have much if any basho content these days.
I disagree. 1) A paperback has to be produced one time while a streaming service has to be produced continuously. 2) Not every author is Tom Clancy. I know several writers who have day jobs to pay the bills. 3) If you had numbers on the paid subscribers for sumo streams, that would be a great example but as you said, the vast majority are not paying.
And as far as individual value, it is very instructive to know how people value and prioritize that content to see how large the market will have to be to make it sustainable. Only the NHK will know the numbers and I hope they’re huge but I doubt it. I mean a professional $10/mo service needs scale to be successful. I hope you are right, though. They won’t be able to take a day off and they’ll be expected to provide a professional quality service.
To be fair, the Kyokai has a subscription channel on Youtube (hosting mostly historical tournaments) and that seems to work pretty well, so in theory the framework already exists, in a place that “Western” audiences would be looking for it . But obviously a channel with current stuff would be much more likely to have its videos ripped and reposted (however, that’s true no matter how it would be hosted, Youtube or otherwise). From NHK Cosmopedia’s point of view, keeping it in-house at least means they don’t have to share the revenues with anyone.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s also a philosophical issue of sorts for NHK; obviously they’re aware that sumo is driving a large part of the public’s interest in NHK World (Premium), but they might not want to lean too far into an audience that’s there for sumo and nothing else. That goes against their reasons for having those channels exist, to some degree at least. They’re meant to provide a window into Japan, not just be the Sumo Sports Network.
Do they have a policy against ads, even on their YouTube channel? I mean, with 2.8 Million subscribers, they would be making decent money on YouTube and they could have a dedicated sumo YouTube channel like the Kyokai. https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCSPEjw8F2nQDtmUKPFNF7_A/about
“Ahahaha! “Happy to pay.” $100/year for content? I don’t think they would be that desperate for your attention, frankly.”
It’s actually rather stunning that you’re this contemptuous and mocking of him for saying X doesn’t work for me but I’d be willing to pay $100 for Y. “I wouldn’t be able to follow sumo if it weren’t available in a format that works for me” is completely reasonable, and it’s a fact that most people who like sumo still aren’t going to pay for a subscription for a format that isn’t convenient.
As I said, this is stupid and shortsighted of the association. They will make a very small amount of money from a small group of foreign fans at the expense of the chance to grow the sport’s long-term audience.
I began my data management career in market research. Businesses want to know where to invest and they figure that out by estimates of market size and market strength. Grocery stores do not just pop out of the ground and they certainly are not all successful. Failing sucks. Bankruptcy sucks. Spending loads of money on something no one wants to buy, sucks.
When I look at sumo, I’m glad there’s a lot of people here. I started this blog because I was the only one I knew who was a fan of sumo and the only news I could find was from Japanese headlines. I hoped to share that love with others and have been very happy that a lot of people actually read what I have to write. I’m even more thrilled when people engage me here with very deep and interesting conversations on sumo (and the lack of mainstream sumo content). But in order for this market to grow, the market strength needs to demonstrate its purchasing power.
You say that it’s short-sighted of the NHK to shutdown the streams. I say, it’s par for the course. My son’s a soccer fan and there’s about a million subscriptions to follow there: from Fubo to ESPN to Paramount, Vix…the list goes on. And they all shut down streams wherever they find them. YouTube, Twitch, you name it. You just ignore the point that I make over and over: people are monetizing other people’s content.
But why is the NFL and FIFA and Taylor Swift — and Donald Trump — all over the media? Because their fans open up their pockets and support them. Whenever a sumo wrestler wins anything or has a camera put in their face, they thank their supporters. 後援 is how the sport survives in Japan. It’s how the Superbowl and the World Cup and Beatlemania happen. People open their wallets for merch and coverage and tickets.
Who in the hell is watching these silly MMA bouts? Who is actually buying these PPV UFC bouts? Why in the hell are people actually putting down good money to watch men roll on the floor? Why is Floyd Mayweather or Mike Tyson still such a draw? I have no idea, and I was even a boxing fan. But they are despite the fact that sumo is a greater sport. Hands down. Yet the market strength for all those is bigger than anything sumo fans have demonstrated.
You talk about “short-sightedness” but I’m in this for the long haul. I just need more people to be there, too. A lot more. The NHK is actually providing a service I can buy…so I did. Konishiki came to town so I bought tickets and had an awesome experience getting thrown by Tooyama. I will always remember flying through the air and landing on that (thankfully) cushioned dohyo, then running to my wife to make sure she got it on video. (If there’s one suggestion I have to the Sumo + Sushi folks, it’s have video replay of the bouts and sell them to us. My wife’s phone footage just isn’t great.)
Sumo fans whined about having a paywall to read John Gunning so people would copy Japan Times articles and paste them. He’s turned to American Football. It seems like it’s wise. Seems like there’s a fan base there and people are willing to pay. From the number of views and followers on sumo Twitter, I see promise. But the community has to move from free-riding to actually supporting itself.
Close your eyes and think of three different people: your average sumo fan, your average Swiftie, and your average NFL fan. How are they enjoying their “fandom”? The Swiftie is paying an absurd amount to sit in nosebleed seats to see an ant crawling around on stage in front of them. When they go home, they buy all her albums and probably stream her on Spotify. Now, your average NFL fan is sitting in his man cave, wearing one of his five jerseys (the lucky one) and looking forward to the next time he’ll be able to afford to go in person. Lastly, we have the sumo fan, alone with their VPN all night, or squeezing 5 minutes of Natto and Kintamayama into their train ride to work. Which fan will get rewarded?
I’m encouraged at the gradually increasing sumo content on NHK World. They only started running Grand Sumo Highlights in 2016 IIRC? Then a few years later offered live sumo (makuuchi only) on one day of the tournament, and now they’re up to three days every tournament. Recently there’s Dosukoi Sumo Salon, and Hiro Morita now has a regular 5-minute segment on J-Arena. NHK obviously realizes there’s an overseas fan base and is rolling out more content. Do I wish they’d show lower divisions, sure, but it’s better than it was. (I’m lucky enough to get NHK World as a PBS station in the US.)
So can I still watch highlights on NHK or is this replacing that and I have to pay $25/mo to watch any sumo now?
Highlights on NHK World will still be there. The $25/mo is for the ability to watch the 2 hour live stream and the dedicated sumo channel with the replays of the Livestream.
Great, thanks Andy!
We subscribed to TV Japan for decades via our cable provider, and we would record Grand Sumo Highlights (in Japanese) and watch them at our leisure. Though we’re happy to have access to sumo via JME, we’re deeply disappointed that there is no way to time-shift the shows (they’re only streamed and not on-demand, as far as we can tell), and no way to natively cast JME content to our television (though there’s a workaround). These two features in particular should be no-brainers in this day and age.
As for the rest of JME, it offers only a fraction of the content that had been available on TV Japan, and some shows they advertised as being on JME turned out not to be there at all. In fact, almost none of what we watched on TV Japan is on JME. We haven’t watched a single show since signing up on March 20. I get the feeling we’ll only be signing up to JME in alternate months to watch the basho highlights.
Was TVJapan = NHK Premium? I didn’t have it before. Or was it more channels? NHK Premium is one of the three channels on the Jme service. The description of the “Jme Select” channel sounds like the “time shift” that you mention, but I might have misunderstood.
As far as that and the technical component, have you reached out to tech support? The thing says it should be available to Smart TVs and there are multiple apps on Apple and Android devices. It would be disappointing if those don’t work. I just go to jme.tv and stream on my PC. I haven’t tried the apps (I don’t have an unlimited phone plan. My phone is expensive as it is at $150/mo and I don’t like telephones. I usually just text people.)
TV Japan did offer programs from stations other than NHK, so I don’t think it was purely NHK Premium. I’m not familiar with that offering, but I’ll check it out in Jme.
By “time shift,” I mean the equivalent of recording it on our DVR and watching it whenever we like, essentially on demand. I’m glad the dedicated sumo channel will be repeating the various broadcasts–that increases our chances of catching one at a convenient time–but it doesn’t hold a candle to on-demand viewing. More than once we’ve been out of the country during all or part of a basho and had to catch up from recordings when we got home; that’s no longer possible, it seems.
We don’t have a smart TV, but usually cast streaming services and YouTube from my phone to a Chromecast connected to our TV. That very basic ability is not built into the app. Again, there’s a workaround (because who wants to watch all those big men on a tiny screen?), but it’s silly that Jme didn’t think to include that functionality in the app from the get-go.
You’re using it on your phone? Ah, yeah, that would be a tiny screen. Do you have a laptop or desktop? If you don’t have a computer or Smart TV I could see how that small screen would be a less than desirable option. But I see that and DVR as device limitations, not from the content side.
Over here we get NHK World showing 30minutes of highlights from the previous day. There’s no other options to even choose. I would happily pay to be able to watch juryo/makuuchi at each Basho but we don’t even have the option.
During its season run, I can watch Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on the show’s official YouTube channel. I do not pay for HBO Max nor does HBO Max deny an audience from watching Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on YouTube. Many thanks! The powers behind sumo could just suck up their egos and desire to pigeon-hole every eye into streaming entity contract few people want and just allow an international fanbase enjoy sumo matches after a short delay. Pennies do not need to be squeezed from every pocket and it makes a lot of business sense to adopt such a pro viewer business model (at least until the addictive elixir of sumo takes hold of its viewer if they wish to be cynical and evil). Or they can spend time, funds and pay salaries to have people in their employment futilely try to block streamers who are just provided a victimless or Robin Hood like service – sumo bouts available for viewing for those interested hours after the bouts have any real ￥ value. Long live the providers! You know who you are. Fight the power and don’t believe the hype.
1) John Oliver’s show is a wee half-hour, mostly scripted comedy show and not live sports coverage
2) Do they post the show to YouTube and make it available while the show is broadcast? No, you watch stale, four-day old content from YouTube.
If stale, day old highlights of sumo is what you need, that’s already available, for free, on NHK World.
People speak with such disdain for “the powers that be” when they’re trying to pay people’s wages to get stuff done. Funding does not rain from heaven, nor does it get squeezed from the tight pockets of pirates or their boosters. I’m just amazed people continue to assume any content provider should just take the loss so people can suck from the teat of Free Labor.
Robin Hood? LOL. Yeah, those Playboys at the NHK are living it up. Afaik, the NHK doesn’t go after anyone who isn’t actively monetizing from their content. If someone makes money from your work without paying you and without your consent, you would have every right to be upset.
I was interested in this for more than just sumo but so far the roku channel is buggy and annoying to use (the focus randomly disappears and it crashes sometimes). I’ll probably stick with it for a while but so far, this is less awesome than hoped.
Thank you. I find this kind of feedback/review helpful. Just curious if you have reached out to tech support and whether you had a good or bad experience with it?
The framings of job creators, content providers, stealing labor leeches or something in that ball park just don’t work for me here. The moral imperative against streaming just isn’t my thing either, especially now. To each there own, cool. But if you are shilling for NHK, I hope some transparency is forthcoming. lol
Hope the upcoming basho is a good one with few injuries but lots of on dohyo drama.
Drop the “job creator” rhetoric. Producing any of this content requires labor. That labor must be compensated. You would rather sponge off Natto. I get it. He doesn’t get compensated by the people who use his service. YouTube, the great fence of digital content, pays him for eyeballs. However you want to frame your incapacity to pay for people’s work is up to you.
Ah, I got it wrong. I thought you were implying that Live Twitch streamers and post production providers like Kintamayama and Natto were illicit actors leeching from the hard labor of NHK and other licensed broastcasting entities. It is of course people like me who are the bigger leeches of labor because I watch their services but don’t buy them a proper coffee for there efforts. At least they are producing something. That is not without some truth I suppose. Thanks. Still, I feel the sport of Grand Sumo would do better with my solution to grow a fanbase internationally but then, I am not a Friedmanite. And yes, NHK has the legal right to attempt to shutdown channels airing sumo bouts without their permission; however, I do hope that they and their informants fail futality and just let it go. And absolutely of course I hope labor is properly compensated from the lowest tiers of all industries. Enjoy the basho! Sadly, it looks as if the field is already set to be depleted.
Yes, enjoy the basho. But yes, it does look like we will be short several top names.
But I do want to clarify. I would not call them leeches but I am outright stating that the NHK has a point. As I said in another reply, we would feel upset if someone else was posting our content and making money from our content so it’s wrong to attack the NHK for protecting it. If you saw your home movies on TV and they were making money from your movies without your knowledge or consent, you would have a right to be upset.
I wouldn’t call the streamers and YouTubers leeches because I do think they have a point when it comes to fair use. But my bottom line is that as fans we need to embrace it when the NHK makes their content accessible and we can’t get greedy and expect them to just give it away for free. As I said in the other reply, there’s a lot of content available for the NFL and Taylor Swift because the fans are willing to spend money to see it. If sumo fans want everything and we want it all for free, they’re just going to ignore us.
I watch an enormous amount of programming on NHK World, which I get through my cable provider. My Japanophilia extends way beyond sumo. It seems this is continuing, which is great because I can manage my viewing by DVR. I’ve been forced to use streaming for some other sports which have been dropped wholly or partially from cable, but find it less convenient than the cable/DVR combination. I hope NHK World will continue on cable.
The thirty minute highlight show is fine for me, though I do enjoy the live Sunday shows, As for watching the lower divisions, to be honest many of the bouts in the first half of makuuchi aren’t really that worth watching anyway. I rely on Tachiai to alert me to up-and-comers.
DVR capabilities have definitely been a theme here. I haven’t had cable or DVR for about 20 years now. I’ve gotten by with my PC’s mouse but I will look into what’s needed to fill that gap.