A Nippon Television Network Corp. producer who bribed viewers to lift the ratings of his own shows will be out of a job next week and network executives demoted themselves over the debacle.
An independent investigation detailed Masaomi Ando's scheme to pad production costs by 10.07 million yen to finance efforts to track down and bribe households that take part in independent TV program ratings by Video Research, the sole domestic industry standard for monitoring viewer preferences.
The investigation found Ando, 41, acted on his own to spend 8.75 million yen of the slush fund. His dismissal is effective Nov. 25.
