Journalism.co.uk: Japan’s NHK Tries Out 1-Minute Documentaries

Posted December 08, 2016

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Japan's largest broadcaster is experimenting with short-form documentaries, published to Facebook,  to try and attract younger audiences. There is no denying that the media landscape is shifting.  That means that there is a generational divide in the way that people seek out, and consume content -- particularly journalism.

Catalina Albeanu of Journalism.co.uk reports on the story:

NHK now produces one-minute documentaries based on the investigative work undertaken for the television programme, which are published on Facebook.

“We took a 25-minute documentary programme and condensed it into one minute,” he told delegates at the News Xchange conference in Denmark today (1 December).

“This is not just a teaser, but a complete product to deliver our journalism.”

Hanawa joined NHK as a documentary maker to produce long programmes, but since he started working on the experiment, short form has grown on him.

“I love longform documentaries but after I started this trial, I gradually realised that the length of video is not so important – [making a] documentary is not a matter of length, but of storytelling. What kind of message do you want to deliver? That is the point.”

One of the experiment's success stories is a video on student loans and bankruptcy, which exceeded the team's expectations on audience reach.

"The largest number were men between the ages of 35 and 44 who don't normally watch our programme on TV," he said.

Read the full report.