NHK is cracking down on households with TVs that have failed to pay subscription fees in order to prevent free riders from using its services, by limiting who can access its news website as well as setting up a new team in charge of enforcement.

The public broadcaster last week began requiring users to enter their NHK subscription information to use NHK One, its online news website that was newly launched in October to replace its news site.

The move is part of an effort to reduce the number of users who are watching NHK channels and accessing news on its website without paying its mandatory subscription fee.

The company has also set up a special team of lawyers and sales staff in charge of increasing collection of reception fees from nonpaying viewers by filing civil procedures against them, through a collaboration with regional broadcast stations.

¡°In order to address the sense of unfairness, it was necessary to strengthen both the scope and the rigor of measures against those who have installed a television and entered into a contract (with NHK), but have failed to pay their reception fees for an extended period of time,¡± NHK Chairperson Nobuo Inaba said at a news conference held last Wednesday.

According to NHK, the number of viewers who have failed to pay reception fees for an extended amount of time has been on the rise in recent years.

While only around 720,000 households failed to pay the fee in fiscal 2019, through March 2020, there were 1.74 million nonpaying households in fiscal 2024 ¡ª an increase of about 140%. This means that the payment rate for the service was 78% for that year, down from 81% in 2019.

NHK is a national public broadcaster, and every household that has a device that can receive television signals is required to pay a reception fee, regardless of whether they watch its programs. Although the price varies depending on the payment plan, the cost of the plan that includes both terrestrial and satellite channels is between ?1,800 ($11.50) and ?1,900 a month.

Up until recently, NHK¡¯s online news service has been available for free. But with the new restrictions, only those who have entered their contract information will be able to access all the content on the website.

For new users, the website will make repeated reminders for them to register and sign in. If they fail to do so, the reminder will cover a third of the screen permanently, making it difficult to access all the content on the site.