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Since @Good_Haro and I were talking about it, I wanted to talk about the real world entertainment industry things idolish7 takes a nod at so first things first, Music Festa (1)
Music Festa most likely is the i7 universe’s nod to Music Station, a music program that has been airing since 1986 on TV Asahi from 8-9pm on Friday’s (“golden time” aka prime time) (2) https://twitter.com/good_haro/status/960154256627195905
Music Station has usually been the most watched non-NHK music show (I’ll explain NHK vs non-NHK in another thread later when NHK enters the i7 universe LOL) and has a palatable influence on what is popular. They have a few acts perform each week, show single/album rankings (3)
And will have “feel good” mini corners such as showing kids music that was popular during the year they were born and getting their reactions. They will feature brand new/indies bands on the show, just like mitsuki mentions, and it’s an amazing PR opportunity (4)
Now, Mitsuki describes this Music Festa as a yearly event that lasts 10 hours. Music Station is a weekly hour long show but they have a yearly Super Live episode that runs for 4 hours as of 2003. This usually airs around Christmas and is usually a pretty well watched program (5)
It’s also live, which means lower thresholds for mess ups and extensive practice sessions/a whole lot of coordination on the staff side of things. You also will get relatively unknown new acts rubbing elbows with big name mega stars on super live (6)
Now, we’re entering into gossip town here but here’s an interesting tidbit about Music Station (which does reflect a bit in the later stories in i7): there are certain acts that either have never appeared on or only appeared one/a few times and never again despite popularity (7)
As you may have guessed, the one timers/those who don’t appear again after a few performances are usually artists who do something to piss off management. Ex. Russian act tATu last minute canceling (which rose Thee Michelle Gun Elephant’s reputation since they stepped in) (8)
But what about the acts that never had the opportunity to appear despite topping the charts and not seemingly doing any entertainment industry faux pas? The answer is production company warfare (9)
The biggest example is what I call the Tragedy of Da Pump. Da Pump was a chart topping boy band under the Avex record label (avex tune more precisely) that peaked in 2001. One notable thing about da pump was it was a successful boy band not affiliated with Johnny’s Jimusho (10)
Johnny’s is a behemoth of the entertainment industry with a strangle hold grip over male idol acts. They also enjoyed their virtual monopoly over male idols and kept this monopoly by reaching “agreements” with certain tv shows and print media companies (11)
The widely talked about gossip behind da pump never appearing on music station is because of tv asahi’s relationship to Johnny’s. Apparently, Johnny threatened to pull all (incredibly popular) Johnny’s acts from music station should they put in rival boy bands (12)
Word is that TV asahi complied since what is one flavor of the month group compared to the gigantic idol factory that has been churning out successful male idols since the 60s? Thus, you have your SMAP, Arashi, Etc. on music station almost on a weekly basis (end)
(Misc) I could write a whole ‘nother tweet chain about who was banned from music station lmao
