drama fans, "We don't regard broadband as mainstream media. It will never happen. Broadband is a complementary medium." Television ratings are calculated by several researching firms. Video Research Ltd. is one of the more reliable firms. More television networks, advertisers, and Japanese drama fans use the numbers from this firm than any other. The ratings focus on the Kanto (Tokyo) and the Kansai (Osaka) areas, which are believed to be a good representation of what most of Japan watches. The ratings become available for the general public every Wednesday. Rating system The rating system is very simple. All the major Japanese television networks make up the television market, so a research firm must determine the size of an average audience. The audience size is determined using two factors: the amount of content that is transmitted and the amount that is received, as market size varies from firm to firm. The viewer count of a given episode is calculated using a variety of polling methods. Ratings are calculated using a percentage or point system. This is based on the episode's viewership numbers divided by the market size. Finally, the numbers are published on the research firm's website. A hard copy is also produced. There is no solid science on how to interpret these rating percentages. For fans, simply the drama with the highest percentage is the "winner" for the week. The fans use these numbers to decide which dramas they should watch during the remainder of the season. Despite this simple interpretation, there are one or more factors that may come into play that explain why some dramas receive higher percentage points than others. For example, evening dramas draw better ratings than those that air in the mornings and afternoons. Although the transmission size is virtually the same in the mornings, afternoons and evenings, the evenings draw higher numbers because most evening viewers work during the day, and fewer people are at home watching television. There are, however, some exceptions: For example, the NHK Asadora drama Oshin drew an average rating percentage of 52.6%, a number that would be extremely good for an evening drama but even more extraordinary for a drama that airs in the mornings and six days a week. Finally, rating percentage plays a heavy role in the success of a drama artist. The numbers of an artist's previous work are used by TV producers to determine whether