"Tonight 2" Heading for Its Last Round Closing Its 21-Years History
Jan 9th, 2001

In March this year, "Tonight 2" will be closing its long history. The program is our late-hour show aired by TV Asahi and its affiliated stations for many years. It started in October 1980 with Yutaka Tonegawa as its first anchorman, and it is now entitled "Tonight 2", anchored by Jiro Ishikawa. Throughout its long history extending over 20 years, the program has been a pioneer in producing a new "midnight culture zone" and stayed as one of our flagship programs keeping up its innovative viewpoints in covering topics ranging from politics and economy to underground cultures.

With the changes in the general life-style, however, the 11:00pm-12:00 window is now transforming into a quasi "prime time" for young-adult audiences. We have launched a new slot-genre called "Neo Variety", an entertainment slot targeted at the new generation, and it has been evaluated highly. Since we believe the genre will take on growing importance as we enter the multi-media age, we have decided to carry out drastic structural changes in this window at the upcoming programming reshuffle in April. We are going to form a new variety slot, which may be categorized as a "Second Neo Variety" slot, in the windows starting from 11:00pm with an aim to fostering young producers and further strengthening the development of entertainment programs with great possibilities.

Over the past many years, "Tonight 2" has gained its support from its audience as a pioneer of midnight programs. We feel we owe much of such popularity to the personalities composing the show including the current anchor Jiro Ishikawa, who has assumed the heavy responsibility for the past 9 years after succeeding his predecessor, and the film director Shinya Yamamoto, who has been in the show for the past 21 years since its launch with his innovative reports made in his very distinctive phrasing. We would like to express our heartiest gratitude to all of the personalities in the show and look forward to their continued contribution in our programs in the future.