All board members should resign to make a fresh start.

Buffeted by a series of scandals, Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) aired a 135-minute special live program Sunday night titled ``NHK-ni Iitai'' (Things I want to say to NHK), in which the president, Katsuji Ebisawa, answered critical questions offered by viewers and panelists in the studio.

Five months have already passed since the scandal involving a staff member's pocketing of funds to produce programs came to light. Ebisawa, 70, has been under strong pressure to resign by NHK's trade union. Also, the number of viewers who in protest refuse to pay NHK's monthly fees topped 110,000 at the end of November.

The Asahi Shimbun has been offering constructive criticism and counterproposals to NHK at every major turn of events. We argued that viewers mistrust NHK because of the way it has dealt with the scandals, not the fact that the scandals occurred; that the only way to rebuild viewer confidence was to present proof that NHK has changed its ways; and that it should air a program so that those in charge can answer questions from viewers.

We commend NHK for having actually followed up on our latter suggestion, albeit belatedly. It was also commendable that unflattering commentators appeared in the program as panelists and the president answered questions from viewers conveyed by telephone and facsimile.

With this format, NHK must have expected that Ebisawa would be subjected to humiliating attack. Many people must have thought that finally NHK was playing for high stakes.

But rather than winning in the high-stakes game, NHK appears to have been driven into a corner. Viewers offered insightful opinions in their criticisms of NHK's management. Shuntaro Torigoe, a broadcast journalist, said 90 percent of listeners to his radio program had said they would not pay the NHK fees unless Ebisawa stepped down. Nobuko Hiwasa, a consumer advocate who is now involved in the rehabilitation of scandal-ridden Snow Brand Milk Products Co. as a non-executive member of the board, said all members of the management team should step aside.

Had Sunday night's program been a regular TV drama, NHK no doubt would have turned the tables on viewers by writing a twist into the final scene. But that didn't happen.

While Ebisawa said he was ``painfully aware'' of his responsibility, he made it very clear that he did not intend to resign for the moment. ``It is an urgent task for me to prepare the ground for carrying out reform,'' he said. If he stays in his office, he had to present a concrete plan for an innovative reform plan that satisfies the viewers. But he did not. That was the reason why his detractors said he said as if it were no business of his own.

Critics also called attention to the lack of an open atmosphere in NHK. Tsutomu Konno, who once produced programs for NHK, said there are a tendency toward tighter control of the staff from the above and risk-averse mentality among people engaged in production of programs. In effect, he said the problems at NHK could not be solved by Ebisawa's resignation alone.

The program ended up fueling the people's mistrust rather than allaying it. It appears that the only way open for radical reform of the public broadcaster is to make a fresh start with new management, just as Snow Brand Milk Products Co. has been trying to do. We propose that all the members of the board resign. If NHK procrastinates on the question of reforming itself, the politicians may intervene in the problem.

The program's panelists also commented that NHK's managing committee was not free from blame either. Kakutaro Kitashiro, chairman of IBM Japan, was persuasive when he said the committee had failed to perform its duty of overseeing the management-even though it has the power to hire and fire NHK president.

The managing committee was to sit in session Tuesday. Because the committee chairman retired following expiration of his term of office, members were to choose a successor. We hope the committee members will have a thorough discussion of what they want NHK to be.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Dec. 21(IHT/Asahi: December 22,2004)