Morning Check! Fuji Morning Power
“This name has the vibe of an old show from the late Showa era or early Heisei era.”
Haruka couldn’t help but complain, then opened the browser and typed the program name into the search bar.
The search results immediately popped up a bunch of things: the program’s official website, the homepage of the host’s agency, past guest lists, program clips, related discussion threads…
She ignored all those miscellaneous links, scrolled down, and accurately clicked on the Japanese Wikipedia article page.
After quickly skipping the long official introduction full of fluff and polite phrases, her eyes locked onto the core information.
“Morning Check! Fuji Morning Power” — a morning information radio program under Fuji Media, primarily focusing on radio production and broadcasting, which has been on the air for twelve years.
Its main audience is commuters aged 25 to 45.
It airs from Monday to Friday, 7:00 AM to 9:00 AM.
The program covers current news, entertainment information, weather forecasts, traffic conditions, guest interviews, and music recommendations.
Its average listenership has long been stable within the top three in its time slot, with the golden period concentrated between 7:30 and 8:30.
Haruka nodded subconsciously as she read.
She scrolled down and spotted a supplementary note: Although the program has a fixed studio at Fuji Television and some footage is simulcast via CS broadcasting and online distribution, the main production and broadcasting format is still radio.
‘So… this isn’t a TV show? The core is actually a radio station? The main battlefield is on the radio side.’
Haruka thoughtfully stroked her chin and began to construct an audience profile in her mind.
The program’s golden time slot was from 7:30 to 8:30 in the morning.
The commuting time of Japanese office workers is notoriously long worldwide.
Especially in the Tokyo metropolitan area, a one-way commute of over an hour is commonplace.
Trains flooding into the city center from Chiba, Kanagawa, and other areas are packed every morning; office workers who drive are mostly stuck on the Shuto Expressway, Route 7, or Route 8 during this time, stop-and-go, staring at the taillights of the car in front.
During this time slot, absolutely no one except retired elderly and full-time housewives has the leisure to sit down and seriously watch TV.
So, over 80% of this program’s audience is either wearing headphones on the train or twisting the radio knob in front of the steering wheel — they just use it as background music.
Haruka muttered to herself as she reached this conclusion.
But she felt that just reading the text was too abstract; she needed to actually listen to get a feel for it.
She skillfully switched to Niconico and typed the program name into the search bar.
For an old radio program that had been on air for twelve years and had a loyal fanbase, there were bound to be many audio clips uploaded by “wild radio enthusiasts” online.
Sure enough, thousands of videos instantly popped up in the search results.
However, rather than “videos,” they were more like “audio files disguised as videos.”
The thumbnails of most uploads were extremely sloppy, yet they all maintained the same crude style: a static image of the program logo or a screenshot of the host sitting in the studio.
Lazy uploaders simply used a black background with white text, casually slapping on the date and guest name.
No footage, no editing — clicking on them gave you a pure audio recording of the entire episode.
But in the comment sections of most uploads, enthusiastic listeners had created timestamp markers:
XX:XX News ends
XX:XX Guest appears
XX:XX Memorable moment
These jump coordinates were clearly meant to help later viewers quickly skip to the part they wanted to hear.
“These radio listeners really care about ritual.”
Haruka randomly clicked on the latest episode uploaded yesterday.
The screen only showed a static photo of the studio.
The moment she hit the play button, a middle-aged man’s extremely high-pitched, piercing voice burst from the speaker—
“Good morning～ Tokyo! Ah, no, wrong line—good morning, Tokyo! It’s only 8 degrees this morning, everyone, don’t forget to wrap up warm before heading out! Okay, without further ado, let’s get straight into today’s traffic report—”
Immediately after, there were several minutes of dense, machine-gun-like congestion updates for various Shuto Expressway lines, accident reports on the Chuo Expressway and Tomei Expressway, a quick result update on last night’s Japan Series, all interspersed seamlessly with a couple of trivial entertainment world gossip bits and the weather forecast.
Massive information load.
Insanely fast speaking speed.
Haruka leaned back in her chair, expressionlessly enduring it for five minutes, then clicked the red X in the top-right corner.
“What a lullaby this is.”
She rubbed her temples and couldn’t help but complain.
“There’s no buildup, no climax, no resolution. It’s as bland as plain water. If I listened to this at home, I’d be back in a nap within three minutes.”
But then she reconsidered.
Ritsu would never throw her into a truly boring, obscure show.
After all, given her current status, she definitely wouldn’t need to accept any third-rate work.
So beneath this seemingly “boring” surface, there must be some underlying logic she hadn’t yet grasped.
Wait…
The way I just approached it was wrong from the start.
This clearly isn’t something meant to be “listened to seriously while sitting on a couch or lying in bed.”
Its positioning is background noise.
She closed her eyes and tried to put herself in someone else’s shoes.
Haruka imagined herself as a standard Tokyo office worker who had worked overtime until 1:00 AM the previous night and had chugged two cans of black coffee that morning just to barely keep her eyes open.
With huge dark circles under her eyes, she crept along bumper-to-bumper on the Shuto Expressway during the morning rush hour, moving inch by inch.
The car radio was on simply to keep the stuffy cabin from being too quiet.
Traffic reports were a necessity—she had to know if there was a jam ahead and whether to switch routes.
The weather forecast was useful—it determined what to wear today.
As for the Japan Series results, it didn’t matter, but it was better than dead silence.
This information didn’t need to be exciting; it just needed to be “useful” and “low brain power.”
But all of this was just the fundamentals.
Any competing radio program in the same time slot could do these things.
So the question was: how do you keep listeners from switching channels?
How do you make a commuter who’s been tortured by the commute, feeling dead inside, not casually spin the dial to J-WAVE for pop music after the traffic report ends, but willingly stay tuned?
“The hook.”
Haruka’s eyes snapped open.
There had to be a “hook” that made people “want to keep listening.”
This hook could be suspense, controversy, or an explosive enough topic.
An extremely fitting word instantly popped into her mind—
Cheap baiting.
It was just like that famous girl band anime that got famous by “cheap baiting.”
The writer deliberately held onto a cliffhanger for thirteen episodes, torturing the audience’s emotions, but everyone still watched faithfully every Thursday while cursing.
She pulled up the PDF Ritsu had sent and flipped to tomorrow’s script page.
The script was written neatly:
A five-minute “guest exclusive interview segment.”
Preset questions included:
“How are you recovering?”
“What are your thoughts after returning to the stage?”
“What are your next work plans?”
These questions were all standard, polite, and completely non-aggressive template questions.
But after reading them, Haruka curled her lips in disdain.
Because she had learned from her last experience with the magazine.
“Hah, who believes this kind of surface script?”
She knew too well her current commercial value.
As a top-tier popular idol, after being silent for over a month following a car accident, not only did she not become a vegetable or suffer paralysis, but she miraculously made a comeback without injuries.
This incident itself was one of the biggest bombshells in the entire Japanese entertainment industry right now.
The program crew had gone to great lengths to invite her and even set aside a full five-minute solo segment.
For a morning radio program where every second is precious, five minutes was an extravagance.
If they only used it to ask circle-jerking nonsense like “How are you feeling?” and “Keep up the good work,” the producer might as well resign on the spot tomorrow.
No matter how boring a TV show is, at least there’s the visual to fall back on.
As long as the guest is good-looking, with the camera on their face, the audience will watch for a bit.
But radio has no such buffer.
As soon as listeners find your voice boring, they switch channels with a single finger movement, without even a second of hesitation.
Magazine interviews are even simpler.
Most of the time, it’s image first, content second, and the final output is a written draft.
Besides, both parties have approval rights, so there’s always an escape route.
Therefore, radio hosts are often more “dangerous” than TV hosts or magazine editors.
They don’t have the TV show’s camera cuts to bail the guest out, nor the manager’s signboard outside the studio to call for a stop.
And veteran radio hosts are best at using a seemingly gentle, caring tone to gradually lure guests into the trap they’ve preset.
For example:
“What was going through your mind the moment the accident happened?”
Or:
“There are rumors that during your hospitalization, your agency’s management considered replacing you with another member. What do you think about that?”
If she showed obvious panic, an overly long silence, or even a single misstep in her answer on air, then today’s episode would become the headline carnival for all gossip media tomorrow morning.
Radio was exactly that kind of double-edged sword.
When there’s no visual to cover up, any hesitation, pause, or guilt in the voice is magnified infinitely.
But conversely, if handled properly, “sound alone” can create a sense of intimacy and genuine impact that TV can never achieve.
After completing this thorough deduction in her mind, Haruka leaned back in her chair, stared at the ceiling, and let out a long breath.
Wait…
When did I become so knowledgeable about this?
She suddenly realized.
‘Have I really started to become part of the entertainment world?’
But complaints aside, she was now more curious about another question—
How had her past self handled such situations?
She switched back to Niconico and returned to the search results page for Morning Check.
This time, instead of randomly clicking on the latest episode, she moved her mouse to the sort menu in the top right and switched from the default “upload time” to “most viewed.”
‘If I’ve been on this show before, the view count should be pretty high, right?’
After two seconds of loading, a brand-new ranking refreshed.
The moment Haruka’s eyes landed on the video at the very top, her hand froze on the mouse.
The top spot was a recording from six months ago.
Its terrifying view count was followed by an insanely long string of zeros, and the gap between it and the second place was so huge it was jaw-dropping—a completely landslide victory.
The video thumbnail was still that unchanged static screenshot of the studio.
But right in the center of the image, there was a ridiculously exaggerated red bold title:
[Broadcasting Accident!? Legendary Episode! Super Morning Miracle Complete Preservation Edition!]
Not only that, the preview was covered in a thick layer of comments, and the comment count below was nearing ten thousand.
“Huh?”
Haruka stared blankly at the screen.
Among this program that had been on air for twelve years, recorded and spread by countless radio enthusiasts, the one with the highest popularity, the most overwhelming view count, the one hailed by all listeners as the “legendary god episode”—
The protagonist was… herself?
Haruka looked at the visually impactful title, was silent for a few seconds.
Then she slowly moved her mouse to the play button.
click