In December 2024, Japanese weekly magazines reported allegations of misconduct involving a former television star and a Fuji Television employee, and questions about how the broadcaster had handled the matter. Fuji TV's response, on 17 January 2025, became a bigger story than the scandal: a closed-door press conference that barred weekly magazines, online outlets and foreign media, allowed no live broadcast, and restricted what attendees could publish. Commentators called it a 'picture-story show'.
The advertisers answered immediately. About 40 sponsors had halted advertising by 20 January; between 18 and 20 January, more than 350 commercials were pulled and replaced. By 22 January, 75 companies had withdrawn advertisements; by 25 January, over 120; by the end of the month, 311 companies and organizations had replaced their Fuji TV commercials with public-service announcements. By late February, only 72 companies were still sponsoring the network.
The resignations followed the advertisers, not the other way around: president Koichi Minato and chairman Shuji Kano stepped down on 27 January; veteran powerbroker Hisashi Hieda left his advisory role in February and his board seat by June. A third-party committee reported on 31 March. Fuji Media Holdings' stock fell 13% in three weeks. The case is a textbook in crisis escalation: the misconduct was the spark, but the closed-door press conference was the accelerant — it converted a scandal about one incident into an indictment of the company's culture, and the advertisers priced that in.
Fuji TV's closed-door press conference cost it 311 advertisers in ten days, as sponsors pulled commercials and replaced them with public-service announcements.
A closed-door press conference signals that the company fears scrutiny more than it respects the public — advertisers read the signal the same day the journalists did.
Television's revenue is a confidence market: sponsors buy adjacency to a trusted brand, and 350 pulled commercials in a weekend is a bank run on that trust.
Resigning after the advertisers leave is the most expensive possible sequence — the departures read as concessions extracted by revenue loss, not as accountability.
In a crisis the second story is always the response — a closed door tells the market the company is managing the story, not the problem; advertisers, who buy trust by the spot, sell first.
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