Uo.k.
Takahashi Sakuya sat in the host seat, his monitoring headphones loosely hanging around his neck, and the script on the table had been turned to the last few pages.
The studio was filled with that unique exhaustion that came after two-plus hours of continuous high-intensity work.
A nerve-relaxing sense of “almost there” had quietly replaced the tension at the start of the broadcast.
But Takahashi showed no sign of letting up.
Behind the thick glass of the auxiliary control room, the director made a countdown gesture.
The red “ON AIR” indicator lit up.
“Alright, welcome back.”
Takahashi’s voice seamlessly shifted from the earlier “idle chat mode” into a perfect “live broadcast mode.”
“We just brought you the latest news and Shuto Expressway traffic updates.
“Next up, we move into today’s special interview segment.”
“The guest joining us today is someone I believe many of you are very concerned about—Hoshino Haruka, who has just gone through a major life trial and is now back before everyone.”
“What does she want to say to all of you? Now, let’s listen together to her, after her ordeal.”
He leaned forward slightly, closer to the microphone, with a tone that carried just the right amount of solemnity and anticipation.
Takahashi gave a slight nod toward the glass window.
Director Yamamoto, with tacit understanding, pushed up the fader, and the recording material’s signal light switched from red to green, the audio track running smoothly.
The main studio fell quiet for a moment.
Takahashi took off his headphones, stood up, picked up his coffee—now cold—and took a sip.
His gaze crossed the glass, looking into the auxiliary control room.
In the auxiliary control room, Director Yamamoto was sitting in front of a large mixing console, with a densely packed script and schedule spread out before him.
Behind him, the assistant director was staring at the monitor displaying the program’s timeline, tightly gripping the intercom.
At the workstation on the right, a young female staffer was facing three computer screens, with several windows open simultaneously: the program’s official Twitter back end, the radiko management panel, and a social media monitoring tool that captured keywords in real time.
Generally speaking, traditional radio ratings relied on after-the-fact surveys.
Video Research would release a report only once a month, and the data was severely delayed.
In other words, during the actual broadcast, no one could precisely know “how many people are listening right now.”
For a long time, radio people were essentially working in an environment where they “couldn’t see their listeners.”
But in recent years, things had changed a bit.
Japan’s largest radio network simultaneous distribution platform, radiko, gave them a pair of eyes that could barely glimpse the outside world.
The back end would display “current simultaneous online listening count.”
This number only included the online audience using radiko at that moment, not the vast audience of traditional radios or car radios.
The sample size was limited, but it was enough to provide an extremely sensitive indicator of real-time trends.
The other pair of eyes was social media.
The trend of keywords on Twitter, the interaction volume on official posts, plus radiko’s playback click count—these pieces of data were scattered, but when combined, they could accurately outline the true shape of “whether this segment had actually ignited a reaction.”
For experienced radio people, these seemingly “mystical” and “intuitive” data fluctuations formed the most accurate ratings curve in their minds.
The recorded material played smoothly.
In the first two minutes, it was all standard warm-up Q&A: the tour, recuperation, tips for staying warm in winter.
The auxiliary control room was dead silent.
The young staffer occasionally refreshed the radiko back end; the simultaneous online count stayed at normal levels, with no particular fluctuations.
On Twitter, a few stray fan comments like “Haruka’s here too” drifted by.
A standard, safe start, and exactly the safe play everyone expected.
Then, the speaker broadcast the sound of Takahashi reading those three sharp listener comments.
First, second, third.
The young staffer refreshed the Twitter monitoring panel, and her brow furrowed sharply.
“Mr. Yamamoto, Twitter’s starting to react.”
She reported quickly in a low voice.
“Search volume is rising, but the sentiment is a bit divided. Some people are calling those comments harsh, but a lot of neutrals are watching, and some are even starting to echo the doubts.”
Yamamoto didn’t speak.
He just gave a slight nod.
In his eyes, this was a completely normal node reaction.
When controversial content was first thrown out, the initial wave of online feedback was always chaotic.
Support from fans and attacks from haters poured in simultaneously, canceling each other out, manifesting as a fiercely oscillating, anxious state of data.
The next few minutes would be the true trial that decided life or death.
If the response was well-handled, the positive voices would instantly drown out the noise, creating a strong viral momentum.
If the response was weak, or fell into a silent trap of self-justification, then those malicious comments would be repeatedly screenshotted and spread, becoming tomorrow’s headline material for every gossip magazine to feast upon.
From the speaker came Hoshino Haruka’s slightly hoarse sigh.
“If I had a choice, I wouldn’t want to be remembered this way again.
“Car accidents aren’t fun at all.”
Really.
“What I’m most afraid of isn’t being cursed at—it’s being forgotten.”
“People who curse you… at least it means they’re still watching you.”
After the voice from the speaker stopped, there was a brief moment of silence in the auxiliary control room.
Suddenly, the young staffer’s eyes snapped wide open.
“Mr. Yamamoto!”
Her voice carried a barely controlled tremor.
“Radiko’s simultaneous online count is rising… slowly, but it keeps rising—it hasn’t stopped!”
Yamamoto immediately stood up and walked quickly behind her to look at the screen.
The number on the radiko back end was steadily climbing at a slope that, while not exaggerated, was clearly abnormal compared to the daily rate.
The rate of rise wasn’t as dramatic as a rocket launch, but the upward trend was exceptionally clear and unbroken.
Yamamoto instantly understood what that number meant—
It meant that countless people, the moment they heard that part, immediately shared it with a colleague nearby, or sent it to a friend via chat app, drawing even more new listeners to open radiko.
“Word of mouth,” Yamamoto murmured to himself.
“This is the oldest form of spread. One tells two, two tells four.”
“Slow, but extremely effective.”
“What about Twitter?”
Yamamoto asked in a deep voice.
“The search volume for keywords related to ‘Hoshino Haruka’ is steadily climbing!”
The staffer’s fingers flew across the keyboard, quickly scanning the monitoring panel.
She paused, then forcefully pressed the refresh key.
“It hasn’t entered the overall trending list yet, but at this rate…”
“It just entered! It’s at eighteenth place now, and still climbing!”
“What are the associated tags?”
“They’re tags spontaneously created by neutrals and fans.”
The hottest ones right now are ‘#MostAfraidOfBeingForgotten’ and ‘#HoshinoHarukasTrueFeelings.’
“The sentiment has almost completely shifted to positive. Everyone is quoting her exact words just now. Although some marketing accounts trying to stir the pot are still posting, they’ve been completely diluted by the massive wave of positive discussion from ordinary users.”
Yamamoto stared at the rapidly scrolling data streams for a few seconds, then silently turned and walked back to his seat.
He didn’t say any words of praise, but the almost uncontrollable crinkles at the corners of his eyes completely exposed the ecstasy hidden deep in his heart.
Having navigated the radio industry for over twenty years, he had seen too many “false booms” built by throwing money around, and too many regrets where great content lacked a spark to take off.
What truly excited an old radio person was not seeing artificially inflated data pushed by the platform, but seeing people finish listening and then turn around to share it with those around them.
“Hey, listen to this.”
That kind of spread was the slowest, yet the most awe-inspiring.
Across the glass window, Takahashi, holding his coffee cup, glanced at Yamamoto through the thick soundproof glass.
The two old-timers who had spent most of their lives in the media industry exchanged an extremely subtle, tacit understanding glance.
It worked.