07/17/07 By Anna Kent
A Friday night adult special on a Japanese satellite station is causing a stir with its declaration of government funding. The special features female newscasters playing a game of strip broadcast as they remove an article of clothing with each new headline.
The program, “Hadaka no News Station (Nude News Station),” receives government funding for a five-minute segment of the show during which the audience is taught sign language. Anchor Miyabe Fujino hosts the segment in the buff as she leads her Japanese fans in their weekly sign language lesson.
The news program is broadcast on a satellite station called Paradise TV. In a deal with the Japanese government, Paradise TV receives government money in order to support the effort to make sign language more widespread.
The money is doled out to Paradise TV through the National Institute of Communications Technology (NICT). One of the goals of NICT is to subsidize programs that provide translations for deaf viewers. Much to the upset of NICT, this has led Paradise TV to use its website to thank the government for funding its program “Hakada no News Station.”
NICT would like to clarify that the funding is not in support of the program as a whole and is only offered to propagate the focus on sign language. A representative of the institution was quoted as saying, “We really wish Paradise would stop going around telling everybody that it's being funded by the government.”
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