Hawaii Kiku TV to stop airing Japanese content

[takenoko]

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2 ... ne/.173381

For you older folks, I'm sure you remember stuff from Kiku TV. I remember my co-worker telling me about watching Kamen Rider when it came to the San Francisco Bay Area. I think they're the ones who brought Japanese dramas to network TV when I was watching them in the early late 1990s/ early 2000s

Sad to hear this happen, but not surprised

[DaVinci030]

Japanese, and even Filipino contents? I feel so sorry for those who are in Hawaii.

[Ghost23]

I live here in Hawaii and V3 was my first exposure to the KR series but then it was gone and the Kikaida and 01 was all they played on it. I remember my first sentai was Battle Fever. Then there was Abarenbo Shogun and many other dramas that came later. But for a Japanese station to not have Japanese programs is disheartening and odd. During the day it's usually infomercials. Sounds like it's going to be 24/7 infomercials. A friend of mine from time to time would be hired to translate dramas for them for subtitling. Guess that revenue stream is ending. Sadly that means the only way to get Japanese programming is to pay for the cable station that we have here in Hawaii.

[takenoko]

Wow, people still have cable? It's weird to think of people watching broadcast TV still

[Ghost23]

Wow, people still have cable? It's weird to think of people watching broadcast TV still

Yes I still use an antenna to watch TV. Mainly just a few shows but the rest of the time I'm streaming dramas online or gaming. I'm rarely watching TV more then 3 hours in a day. I think the Japanese cable channel is NGN I think....

[Crimzonite]

Ah, that's sad.

I remember a time back in the early 2000s, when I was chatting with someone from Hawaii about the live action Japanese programs they get. He said something like, "Oh, these days we mainly get dramas, detective shows, and the like." And I said, "That's a lot more than we get here on the mainland!"

[Digifiend]

Airing ShopHQ at all times? It's not just stopping the Japanese programming then, it's effectively closing down and being replaced by a shopping channel!

[takenoko]

Ah, that's sad.

I remember a time back in the early 2000s, when I was chatting with someone from Hawaii about the live action Japanese programs they get. He said something like, "Oh, these days we mainly get dramas, detective shows, and the like." And I said, "That's a lot more than we get here on the mainland!"

Yeah it's a bummer. By the time I was growing up in the 90s, the toku and anime stuff was long gone (although Channel 54 from San Jose had some with British shows like Dr Who, Red Dwarf, and The Prisoner). Sometimes we'd get dramas with subtitles, sometimes none at all!

[Ghost23]

Well the anime and toku stuff was gone but some of the dramas they showed was great. I remember one of the best one I watched was Salaryman Kintaro. It went 4 series. There were quite a few others but this series really stuck with me.

[takenoko]

Check it out, I can draw a line from jdorama to toku

So on TV we'd get random Japanese dramas on channel 26 I think, the world channel. It'd air on Saturday and Sunday nights
-We saw a few episodes of Glass Shoe then Blue Bird with Sano Shiro as the villain for both. Maybe subs from Kiku TV. The first was about a guy in love with his step sister or something. The second was about Sano Shiro hunting down his wife and daughter who took off with her lover. Then, after his wife commits suicide to prevent him from killing the dude, the story does a time jump where the dude gets out of prison, meets up with the older daughter, and they do the same journey while dealing with the tragedy that affected them both. And maybe fall in love???
-Then we watched To Heart: Koishite Shinitai with Fukada Kyoko, definitely no subs there. About her falling in love with a boxer
-Then we saw some Shomuni, go office ladies! Also no subs

So in college, I was a part of the anime club, and I'd usually borrow a tape of anime every week. Eventually, fansubs started coming out digitally, so I was wondering if I could get dramas online too

Most of the dramas were captured by only a few people at the time. I eventually found one or two jdorama channels to hang out on IRC with which to also grab and trade files. It was neat since people would run IRC servers and you'd never know what kind of file you'd get. Also gave back by hosting a server of my own.

Eventually, after discovering Ryuki and Hurricaneger on a trip to Japan, I found the IRC channel for tokusatsu. Hmm, maybe it was even #tokusatsu. Drax had a Japanese friend who'd provide the content back then. I got there just a little bit before everyone moved over to... #TV-Nihon