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The story
Morning Musume’s Oda Sakura is graduating from the group, with a graduation concert scheduled for December. The thread kicked off with a request for “SkyPerfecTV, please” for the broadcast, but opinions quickly splintered — some said Hulu (even without the ability to save footage) was fine, others pushed for Hikari TV for its picture quality. With Juice=Juice specials and streams of their Pia Arena show rolling out through October and November, Hello! Project fans are laser-focused on exactly when and on which platform Oda’s graduation concert will air. There was also a wave of nostalgia for the old days, when BS SkyPerfecTV carried free broadcasts you could record — before sagging viewership numbers pushed things toward today’s mostly paid-streaming model.
What people said
Though honestly, paid is fine, just put together a proper special too
Not like I'd ever rewatch it anyway
Funny how you'd want to rewatch Juice=Juice's shows, but not the other groups
Two weeks of catch-up streaming is plenty
The fact that you can't save it just means you don't know how (lol)
Except nobody but Oda is actually popular
That's the classic "yatteru-kan" (the satisfaction of feeling like you did something, whether or not it's actually useful)
So very Japanese of you
but you can't do that directly with Hulu
Apparently it's possible with the phone app, but I don't want to install something just for that
I want to watch on my PC
You can do it on PC too, lol
Actually, in terms of Japanese subscriber numbers, TV Asahi Channel apparently has almost double the members
November: Juice=Juice special & Juice=Juice's Pia Arena show
December: Oda's graduation concert
…so there's a real chance they stretch this out on Hulu for three months straight
Sounds like they're timing Oda's graduation concert to land right before the Juice=Juice Pia Arena catch-up stream window closes
TikTok aside, there are people shamelessly reposting Hulu footage straight to YouTube too
and I'm planning to cancel again by 12/7
so I won't even be able to watch it on Hulu, will I?
Personally it all depends on how long the Juice=Juice Pia Arena catch-up stream stays up
Hikari TV would be fine too, you know
I reluctantly bought the tuner for it back in the day
Wasn't the last one Sato's graduation concert?
Hikari TV hasn't carried anything since then
At Hina Fest 2018, the part where Sayashi's voice cracked was cleaned up so well it sounded like a studio CD
Same with Tsuji's pitch, which was pretty badly off
That's what you get for being a fan of a group that can't sing
Her last performance and they're only booking Yokohama Arena? Kind of underwhelming
They'll keep releasing it as long as it sells
Hello! Con and the Countdown Concert (the New Year's Eve show) just stopped because the sales data kept coming back bad
I even signed up for a foreign-movie channel just to get access to BS SkyPerfecTV
And that's exactly why it stopped making money and turned into a closed-off, pay-to-play scene squeezing a small core fanbase
Though Juice=Juice has loosened things up a bit these days
It was only a few years ago and it's already nostalgic
They even used to air full-length songs back then
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Hello! Project concert broadcasts used to air for free on BS SkyPerfecTV, with recording freely allowed, but as monetizing that model got harder, recent years have shifted mainly to paid catch-up streaming on Hulu. Hulu offers strong picture and sound quality and a relatively low monthly fee, but has no official way to save (download) footage — and that gap is exactly why the “can you save it or not” debate kept resurfacing in the thread. SkyPerfecTV and Hikari TV, by contrast, let viewers keep a copy at home if they have the right tuner, though that comes with the hassle of signing up for a plan and buying equipment. The thread also included some disparaging remarks about Oda Sakura’s long tenure and appearance, which have been left out of this article. It’s also worth noting that, as of this writing, no official broadcast platform for the graduation concert has been announced — the thread’s discussion is purely fan speculation and wishful thinking.
*This article is compiled and summarized from excerpts of the 5ch (Hello! Project) thread 「Please Broadcast Oda Sakura’s Graduation Concert on SkyPerfecTV」.
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