Videoage International May 2020

6 World May 2020 (Continued from Page 4) Principal,” while his brother- in-law, Kiyotaka Ninomiya, took on the firm’s day-to-day responsibilities. Tetsu liked to talk about his father and why he was grateful for “Banji.” The younger Ue- mura often remembered a time in 1975 — when he was 13 years old — when his parents took him to visit their friend Bruce Gordon in Sydney, Australia, “and left me there for... six years” in order to attend school there. Recalled Gordon: “Of course he had a good Aussie accent!” But perhaps to make sure the young Uemura would also speak perfect “American,” his father sent him first to New York City and, later, to attend Occidental College, a private, co-educational liberal arts college located in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles (which former U.S. president Barack Obama also briefly attended). Asian TV Amid COVID Disruptions R ecently, the organizers of Asia TV Forum (ATF) released a survey conducted with TV content buyers across Asia to find out programming strategies during COVID-19 disruptions. Television viewership has surged around the world as many countries experience lockdowns. And ATF officials have learned that dramas (85.4 percent), kids’ animation (61.5), and formats (41.5) have been taking the top three spots on the schedules, with documentaries/factual ranked fourth (31.5). With only 16.9 percent pre- ference, reruns did not fare well, and movies did even worse, being popular with just 5.4 percent of respondents. As to the replacement of cancelled shows, even though reruns were one of the least favorite genres, 41.5 percent of respondents reported that they were scheduled. Movies garnered 1.5 percent of the vote. Finally, when hunting for urgent content, according to the ATF survey, price is the main criteria for 82.3 percent of respondents. W hileatMIPCOMa fewyearsback, TetsuUemura invited VideoAge editorDomSerafini to lunch to talkabout... sake. Before that, the only time he wanted to talk about television with himwas when Tohokushinsha Film Corporation (TFC), the group founded by his late father, Banjiro, entered the short-lived 3D-TV business. Tetsu (pictured at right holding a photo of his late father) was not too keen to talk shop with a journalist, but not shy about his key interests: his father, 3D-TV, and sake. He explained that “the Kimura family, [which] is distantly related to my family, has a small brewery with a 400-year history and produces premium sake by hand in a small quantity following the traditional technique.” The brewery became a TFC group company 24 years ago. Tetsu started at TFC in 1988 and became president 22 years later. Prior to his untimely passing at the age of 58 on April 21, 2020, he took the title of the company’s “Executive Remembering Tetsu Uemura, 1962-2020 ©2020 MOPI / MondoTV