TOKYO (TR) – Fuji TV announcers Yoko Ozawa, 34, and Ken Katsuno, 26, announced that they are departing the company on their respective Instagram accounts on March 12.
Ozawa is a mid-career announcer who handles everything from sports to variety shows, including hosting “BS Prime Online Today.” Meanwhile, Katsuno is a promising young announcer who appears on “Mezamashi TV” and “Live News It!” as a sports caster.
Both are expected to leave their regular programs in March.
Though neither announcer offered comment, an insider tells Nikkan Gendai (Mar. 13) that reason for the departures is the scandal surrounding former host Masahiro Nakai.
“The reasons for their departures are not only individual circumstances, but are believed to stem from the troubles surrounding Masahiro Nakai that began with the news reports at the end of 2024, and the subsequent investigation by a third-party committee that brought to light the station’s misconduct and sloppy structure,” says an entertainment editor for a sports newspaper.
Fuji TV has experienced a wave of announcer departures. Takahiro Nishioka, Keiko Tsubakihara, and Yumi Nagashima exited in March 2025. This was followed by the departure Risa Kishimoto in June. Marino Fujimoto left in December.
Nakai’s issues have been dubbed “woman trouble,” whereby he acknowledged engaging inappropriate behavior with a female employee in the entertainment industry. The matter surfaced in 2024. Nakai announced his retirement from show business in January last year.
“The issue of Nakai’s ‘hotel drinking’ and other problems led to the normalization of sexual harassment, and the long-term use of female announcers as entertainment staff. The underlying issue is a long-standing culture of concealing such things,” the same source tells Gendai.
It has also been pointed out that those who committed sexual harassment or were involved in the cover-up were promoted.
“Furthermore, declining viewership and the withdrawal of sponsors have hit employees hard, resulting in reduced bonuses, and the myth of ‘high salaries and job security’ at television stations has crumbled,” continues the editor. “With staff reductions, work is concentrated on the remaining announcers, creating a vicious cycle of increasing workload.”
The exodus is being described online with metaphors such as “escaping from a sinking ship” and “rats fleeing a sinking vessel.”
In the case of station announcers, the irregular work schedule and early morning programs often lead to overwork and poor health. For example, announcer Eriko Komuro (27) collapsed from anemia during a live broadcast of Fuji TV’s “Mezamashi 8” on November 11, 2024, and had to leave the studio. She took another day off the following day, and has since returned, but the public attention to these incidents has led to a reputation as a “black station,” and its former popularity among job-seeking students seems to have plummeted, according to Gendai.
A Fuji TV insider relates, “The 1991 film ‘Shushoku Sensou Ijou Nashi’ (No Abnormalities on the Job Hunting Front) was a coming-of-age film produced by Fuji TV, in which a student played by Yuji Oda struggles to get a job at Fuji TV, the most prestigious and highly competitive network. It’s one piece of evidence that Fuji TV was still going strong even right after the bubble burst and was one of the most popular networks among students, but alumni are disappointed that there’s no trace of that image left in Fuji TV today.”
Fuji TV has announced a “plan for revitalization and reform,” but the road to its return to its former glory seems long, says Gendai.
