On the August 15 broadcast of MBS’s “Tsukai! Akashiya Denshidai,” Akashiya Sanma opened up about how stifling TV production has become these days. On 5ch, threads erupted into a generation-tinged clash between users who see stricter compliance as simply “the times changing” and those who call it “pure self-censorship.”
Akashiya Sanma laments the struggles of modern TV: “It’s like there’s no room to breathe… I really just hate it now”
Talent Akashiya Sanma (71) appeared on the August 15 broadcast of MBS TV’s “Tsukai! Akashiya Denshidai” (Saturdays 4pm, Kansai local broadcast) and spoke about how difficult making TV has become today.
The comedy duo “New York” — Hiromasa Yashiki (40) and Kazuya Shimasa (40) — appeared as guests on this episode.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
Just shows how out of touch Yoshimoto comedians are with the times.
Yoshimoto Kogyo clearly needs to keep up the compliance training.
If it's as light as those squeaky toy hammers, that kind of bit is completely doable.
People are just holding themselves back for no reason.
Hinatazaka46 is obsessed with comedy.
If you can't keep up with change, you should retire.
Didn't this old guy say he'd retire around 60 or something?
His word doesn't mean much, huh.
Compliance-ignoring content is popular on streaming platforms, so clearly there's demand.
They just shouldn't be using public airwaves for it.
Well~ "saying stuff you're not supposed to say" used to be a comedian's whole job, right~
Same reason dramas are interesting — they show "things you shouldn't do in real life."
when's De La Cruz gonna surpass Ohtani's hitting?
No way a switch-hitting shortstop pulls off 50-50.
Don't you know he blows a ton of steal attempts?
Takeshi: cultured.
Kansai comedians: no culture.
Takeshi once analyzed it as: "Sanma doesn't have the knowledge base to talk things through intellectually, so all he can do is tell stories from personal experience."
That's exactly why Sanma still gets on stage a few times every year without fail.
Most comedians stop performing live once they've made it big, so it's impressive he still stands in front of an audience.
It's pathetic when comedians get so obsessed with looking stylish that they forget they're comedians.
They've started saying nonsensical stuff like "manzai is cool."
But whether it's funny or not is the only thing that matters.
Sponsor companies that keep hiking prices while still throwing money at TV and celebrities are basically an antisocial force.
Bet you'd say YouTube is fine though lol
When are you gonna realize this kind of "poor little me" minority grandstanding is exactly what's scaring off sponsors
and turning TV and the internet into boring content?
This crappy compliance stuff is outdated now.
Time for an update.
The old days are the ones to avoid, honestly.
Comedians' human rights being ignored, female talents being sexually exploited — it was genuinely unpleasant to watch.
Background and Key Points
Akashiya Sanma has been a fixture of Japanese television since the 1970s, part of the “Owarai Big Three” era of comedians whose free-associating, occasionally cruel banter defined Showa- and Heisei-era variety shows. He is a Yoshimoto Kogyo talent, and Yoshimoto — Japan’s dominant comedy agency — has tightened internal “compliance” (konpuraiansu) rules markedly since a 2019 scandal in which comedians were found taking paid gigs from a fraud ring at private parties, an episode that forced a management shake-up and mandatory conduct training still referenced by posters here. “Compliance” in this context isn’t government censorship; it’s broadcasters and agencies managing sponsor and social-media risk after past incidents, a distinction non-Japanese readers often miss.
The thread doesn’t split on whether TV has gotten stricter — everyone agrees it has — but on why. One camp treats it as overdue social progress, pointing to real abuses of the old system: talent with no labor protections, young women in the industry sexually exploited, all glossed over as “the way things were.” The other insists the constraint isn’t organic change at all but self-censorship (jishuku) manufactured by broadcasters spooked by a small, loud online minority, arguing the same edgy material thrives uncensored on YouTube and streaming precisely because audience appetite hasn’t actually shrunk.
What goes unmentioned is that Sanma himself has kept working the live manzai/comedy-hall circuit for decades even at his stature — the posters praising his stage loyalty never connect it to why he, more than younger stylish comedians, feels television’s constraints so acutely.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Entertainment/Sports News+) thread “[Entertainment] Akashiya Sanma laments the struggles of modern TV: “It’s like there’s no room to breathe… I really just hate it now” / “Back in the Showa era you could say things…”“
