Digital television transition in Japan

The ministry responded by distributing tuners free of charge to all low income households; this prevented a situation that would have been similar to the coupon-eligible converter box program during the 2009 digital switchover in the United States.

The 11 March 2011 earthquake in Tohoku devastated many households in the prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima, where major power and water outages were reported.

[8] Rolling blackouts in some areas of the country that were not seriously affected by the earthquake would take place for the remainder of March; this required the analog auxiliary transmitters in the Kantō region to stop broadcasting for a short period of time.

[9] On 22 April 2011, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications announced that the shutdown of analog transmitters in Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima prefectures would be postponed for up to a year following the original shutdown date of 24 July 2011 out of respect for the victims of the disaster; the television stations licensed to those three prefectures would be subsidized for half the cost of maintaining the old analog equipment.

On 1 July 2011, television stations across 44 of the 47 prefectures that were scheduled to shut down their analog services on the original date began displaying a countdown clock in the lower left corner of the screen indicating the number of days remaining until the analog services ended.

Seventeen days later, the ministry's digital television call center hours were temporarily extended to accommodate additional inquiries.

The end of the transmission of regular programs took place minutes before the start of the third game of the 2011 Nippon Professional Baseball All-Star Series, which was being transmitted by TV Asahi.

[12] On 12 March 2012, the sixteen television stations serving the area that was impacted by the 2011 earthquake (Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima prefectures) began displaying the aforementioned countdown clock.

As with the earlier shutdown, the business hours of the digital television call centers in all three prefectures were temporarily extended as well.

However, some stations that were not part of the country's five major commercial television networks were no longer offered on analog cable after 24 July 2011.