Income from Program Sales and Cultural Events was ¥121.717 billion, more than double the income from the previous fiscal year. Profits were ¥12.13 billion, a 53.0% increase over the previous year.

The season of cultural events started with a festival staging of “Turandot“ with a stellar cast in the newly remodeled Akasaka ACT Theater in the akasaka Sacas complex, followed by “The Seagull“, “Akasaka Grand Kabuki“, “Chicago“, “Hula Girls“ and other exciting productions. Since its opening in March of last year, the theater’s productions have attracted over 350,000 people. The live performance venue Akasaka Blitz also reopened to favorable reviews after its renovation, and it continues to do well, having attracted 250,000 people since. In addition, Tetsuya Kumakawa’s K-Ballet Company was as popular as ever, with its performances of ballets such as “Swan Lake“, “Le Corsair“ and “The Nutcracker“. Regular events such as the “Ultraman Festival“ and “the Hanamaru Market Featured Item Fair“ attracted large crowds. Some of the most popular musical events were the Japan performances of the Rossini Opera Festival, Tomomi Nishimoto’s “New World Tour“, and the national tour of Tsugaru shamisen players the Yoshida Brothers. Broadcast tie-ins with sporting events such as “the K-1 World Max“ and the combined combat sports event Dream brought in throngs of enthusiastic fans. Exhibitions that TBS helped sponsor included the Vermeer exhibition “Vermeer and the Delft Style“, which brought more than 900,000 excited art lovers to the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art. Other well-received exhibitions were “Fungus Oddities: Mushrooms, Mold, and Their Kind“, and the Pola Art Museum Collection.

In the area of media and software, our film “Departures“ became the first Japanese film ever to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and earned ¥6 billion at the box office. Another film, “BOYS OVER FLOWERS the movie“, took in ¥7.7 billion at the box office, and 440,000 sets of the DVD were sold. Other widely discussed films, such as “Sand Chronicles“, “After School“, “I’d Rather Be a Shellfish“, “PANDEMIC“, and “The Triumphant General Rouge“ met expectations in drawing larger audiences to the movie theaters. Ninety thousand copies of the first set of DVDs of the popular TV drama “ROOKIES“ were sold, followed by 100,000 copies of the second set, bringing this series to the top of all our dramas in terms of the number of DVDs shipped. “dEVIL“, “Bloody Monday“ and other dramas were also popular. In addition, programs such as  “Come on! It’s 8PM“, and “The Complete Works of Kokontei Shincho“ are selling well. The overwhelmingly popular anime series “CLANNAD“ was well received, as were works such as “To Loveru and Hidamari Sketches ×365“.

Our communications satellite-based TBS Channel and TBS News Bird subscription broadcasts are doing well in terms of both number of subscribers and income. In addition, our video distribution service TBS On Demand has attracted a great deal of attention since its official launch.

We have enlisted the cooperation of the performers in television programs such as “SUNDAY JAPON“, “The King’s Brunch“, and “ROOKIES“, and films such as “BOYS OVER FLOWERS the movie“ to create themed products for our licensing and shopping business. We are also increasing sales of these products by broadcasting special shopping programs twice a year.

One of our digital ventures was a tie-in with the major Internet search service Yahoo to see if we could publicize new dramas, such as the drama “ROOKIES“, on video-related websites. We are also working on on-demand drama and variety content services for computer users who have missed a program and brief partial broadcasts of spots and shopping programs for low-bandwidth users.

The Stylinglife Group, which we began including in our consolidated accounts this fiscal year, is a corporate group comprising subsidiaries engaged in general retail, mail order sales, manufacture and sales of cosmetics, eating and drinking establishments, and manufacture and sales of Western-style confections under the umbrella of our wholly owned subsidiary Stylinglife Holdings. Its core company, a retailer called PLAZASTYLE, enjoyed a highly successful Christmas merchandising season and has continued to maintain a healthy level of sales. The restaurant business Maxim de Paris collaborated with K-Ballet Company’s performances (sponsored by the business office) to improve its profits from sales by more than 25% for the month of December, a sign that operational tie-ins are starting to show results.