October 31: The state funeral of former Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida (who died October 20) is held at the Nippon Budokan (Kitanomaru, Chiyoda Ward) in Tokyo, and special programs are organized on NHK and commercial TV stations. The state funeral was broadcast live on NHK General and other networks,[1] and on Fuji Television, all programs on that day were broadcast without commercials.[2]
November 1: The Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications relicenses 1,640 TV stations and grants preliminary licenses to 15 new UHF stations and 16 stations (see table below for details). The Radio Law requires general program stations to program at least 30% of their programs on educational and cultural topics . On this day, Sapporo Television , Yomiuri Television, and Mainichi Broadcasting changed from quasi-educational stations to general stations.[2]
First tranche of UHF television stations in Japan
Due to a major revision to the "Television Broadcasting Frequency Allocation Plan" by the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications at the time, in addition to UHF channels 45 to 62, which were previously used only by relay stations, channel 33 was used for parent stations. Channel 44 was newly opened for use (October 13). As a result, preliminary licenses for new UHF stations will be granted under the UHF 1st Channel Plan. At this time, commercial television stations that opened in the first tranche had H as the last letter of their callsign.
The dates and main stations where preliminary licenses were granted are as follows[3] If relocated within the same city, ward, town or village, the description of the current location will be omitted. All commercial television stations that gained their license at the time, had a callsign ending with the letter H (the second tranche followed with the letter I) with the exception of KBS Kyoto, which applied with the callsign of its radio station.
Stations that received preliminary licenses on November 1 (all commercial broadcasters)
Name changed to Setonaikai Broadcasting before signing on. The station was not affiliated with the current Mainichi Broadcasting System which used this name in the 1950s.
