Today's entry: "BS News."

When it comes to the MSM ("mainstream media"), not a few may consider that too rich an oxymoron to be true. I mean, ironists are required to be more subtle than that. So it must be true, which it is. BS News is a satellite news service provided by NHK.

"BS" stands for "broadcast satellite," a fairly common acronym in the crazy world of romanized English in Japan. NHK has four three satellite channels using the same naming scheme: BS1, BS Premium, BS4K, and BS8K.

On December 1, 2023, BS1 and BS Premium were merged into NHK BS.

Obviously, NHK had come up with something else for English speaking audiences to surmount the giggle factor. Its international brands are NHK World Japan, NHK World Premium, TV Japan, and dLibrary Japan. The last two could use a little work, but not bad at all.

(And yes, to be technically correct, BS is an initialism, not an acronym, but who ever says "initialism"?)

Labels: japanese, japanese tv, language, nhk