Today's entry: "BS News."

When it comes to the MSM ("mainstream media"), not a few may consider that too rich an oxymoron to be true. I mean, ironists are required to be more suble than that. So it must be true, which it is. BS News is a satellite news service provied by NHK.

"BS" stands for "broadcast satellite," a fairly common acronym in the crazy world of romanized English in Japan. In fact, NHK provides three satellite television feeds of domestic BS (hey, that's what it's called) service: BS1, BS2, and BShi (hi def, not BShi*).

It is a cool logo, to be sure. But, obviously, if NHK ever wishes to reach a wider English-speaking audience--at least with its international news services--it's definitely going to have to come up with something else to surmount the giggle factor.


Because, as this logo helpfully informs us, tomorrow's brand new televised BS is here today! Okay, okay, I'll stop now. As Stan would say on South Park: "Dude, that stopped being funny about five minutes ago."

(And yes, to be technically correct, BS is an initialism, not an acronym, but who ever says "initialism"?)

Labels: japanese, language, nhk