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The story
In 1987, FCI launched the Satellite Home Shopping program introducing American products, aimed to combat intense "trade friction" between the United States and Japan, starting with the first broadcast on January 15 and the second in May. These broadcasts, featuring Japanese celebrities were beamed to "three million television viewers in 11 Japanese cities". Sales from the first broadcast totalled US$1.4 million while the second was at US$2 million. As the two broadcasts were "not profitable", FCI planned to start a regular program in September using European and American products.
FCI had 22 offices worldwide in 1990.
FCI was involved with videogame publishing as well, being one of the early third-party licensees for Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) starting in 1987. Originally, FCI merely published in North America translations of video games that were released in Japan mainly by Pony Canyon, another company from the Fujisankei Communications Group. FCI was well-known at this time for the many RPG and Adventure games they released for the NES as conversions from PC games, such as the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and Ultima series. Later, FCI began contracting outside development houses to create original games; examples include WCW Super Brawl Wrestling and WCW: The Main Event, both developed by Beam Software of Australia; Might & Magic III, developed by Iguana Entertainment; and Metal Morph and the Runes of Virtue titles in the Ultima series, both developed by Origin Systems. FCI had a long partnership with Origin, starting when Pony Canyon was hired to translate the Ultima PC games for Japan, strengthening through the conversion of Ultima III, IV and V for the NES, followed by Ultima VI and VII for the Super NES, and continuing through the end of FCI's videogame department; a conversion of Origin's PC game Wing Commander II to the Super NES was in development for release by FCI when they closed their video games division. In the mid-1990s, FCI abandoned video game distribution to concentrate on television operations.
Since 1999, Fuji TV, through FCI, has forbidden foreign TV stations from subtitling its dramas, a practice that is criticized and has alienated some fans of the genre.
From Wikipedia’s article on Fujisankei Communications International, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4