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TheJapanese Association of Independent Television Stations (JAITS;Japanese:全国独立放送協議会,romanized: Zenkoku Dokuritsu Hōsō Kyōgi-kai,lit. 'National Independent Broadcasting Forum') is a group ofJapan's reception fee-freecommercialterrestrial television stations which are not members ofthe major national television networks. The association was established on 4 November 1977.^[1]: 30

Its members sell to, buy from, and co-produce programmes with other members. While a few of them, namelyTokyo MX,TVK andSun TV and sell more than the others, it does not mean the former control the others in programming. Meanwhile, some JAITS members (GBS, MTV, BBC, TVN, WTV) broadcast a lot of TV Tokyo's programs.^{[citation needed]} It forms a loosebroadcast network without exclusivity. They form permanent andad hoc subgroups for production and sales of advertising opportunity.^[2]

The English name of the group is provisional. The Japanese documents for the association refer to the acronym JAITS but the fully spelled English name has not been disclosed yet.

In Japanese, the group was previously known asZenkoku Dokuritsu Yū-eichi-efu Hōsō Kyōgi-kai (Japanese:全国独立UHF放送協議会,lit. 'National Independent UHF Broadcasting Forum'), bearing the termUHF as all of the member stations broadcast on the UHF band in analogue, in contrast to major networks that primarily broadcast on theVHF band in analogue. All the Japanese terrestrial television stations switched to UHF digital when all analogue television transmissions (both VHF and UHF) were shut down between 24 July 2011 and 31 March 2012.

Stations are listed inJapanese order of prefectures which is mirrored inISO 3166-2:JP.

In thestrict (North American) definition of "not affiliated with any networks", the only independent terrestrial television station in Japan would beThe Open University of Japan, which produces almost all its programs in-house. In addition, most of the JAITS independent stations have investments from theChunichi Shimbun Co.

The JAITS and the Japanese public take "Independent UHF Station" (Japanese:独立U(HF)局,romanized: dokuritsu Yū(-eichi-efu) kyoku) for not being members of large networks, in which the Tokyo's stations almost control other members' programming. Those networks are also affiliated with large national newspapers. On the other hands, the JAITS stations are often affiliated withprefectural or metropolitan newspapers and prefectural governments, whose degree of influence may vary.

MTV, GBS, BBC, TVN, and WTV broadcast certain programmes fromTV Tokyo.^{[citation needed]}

Here is the description of characters of the independent commercial terrestrial television stations in Japan. Currently all such stations are members of the JAITS.

Their areas of coverage are located inKantō,Chūkyō andKansai regions which are the most urbanised in Japan. Their reachable population is large. If the population was too small they could not have number of viewers and sponsorship to sustain the station. However their coverage are within major network stations' official coverage, exceptTXN network membersTV Osaka's,TV Aichi's andTV Setouchi's which are adjacent to. Multi-channelcable television may cover significant parts of the areas. Externally sourced popular contents are often too expensive to buy therefore they are very difficult to beat major networks in viewing rates.

Compared with the major networks, the independent stations have a relatively smaller audience, but have a more flexible schedule due to their decentralized nature.

Short-runninganime productions (as little as one episode) are often broadcast by the independent stations, a concept which has been referred to as "UHF anime". They also sometimes run shopping programming, along withbrokered programming such asinfomercials andtelevangelism. In 2000,All Japan Pro Wrestling moved to JAITS affiliates after it ended its run onNippon TV.

• Independent station

• Directory of members atTokyo MX

• Television networks in Japan
• Independent television stations in Japan
• Television channels and stations established in 1977

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