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Public service broadcasters (PSBs) around the world are restructuring their constituencies to meet the new challenges of increasing media diversification. New PSB management approaches include the diversification of transmission channels and development of contents. The optimum deployment of distribution channels and content genres, referred to as Portfolio Management, is now a major management priority and will provide the most efficient strategic allocation of management resources. In this article, we take NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyokai), Japan’s PSB, as a research target and analyze and evaluate its portfolio management. NHK has introduced the Value for Money (VFM) index through the measurement of WTP (Willingness to Pay), and has initiated channel-genre matrix management. This study aims to estimate the WTP of viewers’ reception fees from viewer surveys, and then distribute these WTP values to the channel-genre matrix. We then use Propensity Score Matching (PSM) to evaluate how NHK’s channel-genre ma...

IEC 61850 is a series of international standards for various aspects of substation automation systems (SASs) including functional elements named logical nodes (LNs). Currently, intelligent electronic device (IED) vendors individually select LNs to build their own IEDs, so it is difficult to construct a SAS in a multivendor environment. One solution is to create functional specifications that can be commonly adopted by multiple electric utilities in a country or region. This paper focuses on volt-var control (VVC) and proposes specifications for implementing the VVC functions commonly for multiple electric utilities. It explains two types of VVC systems and their functions, and proposes policies to design mapping the functions to LNs. It also depicts and considers the mapping results obtained according to the policies, and confirms their effects and feasibility.

This article examines the integration of environmental policy into EU competition law while taking into account its “Modernisation” reform and the influence of the European Social Model.Seeking the reconciliation between environmental policy and competition law is essential to foresee the global competition enforcement in the future and specify the scope of competition law and the definition of competition itself. However, the debate on this theme has been premature in the EU and some leading cases and interpretations have just emerged.This article deals with this topic in four phases: First, there is a review of the recent “Modernisation” reform, which introduces the approach focusing on consumer welfare and economic efficiency in EU competition law. This way of thinking tends to exclude non-competition values including environmental protection.Second, there is an examination of the influence of the European Social Model, which introduces a wider interpretation of non-competition values in EU competition law. This leads to the conflict of “competition lawyer vs. EC lawyer” because the former stresses the pro/anti-competitive perspective and the latter facilitates the concept “mandatory requirement” from case law in the field of free movement.Third, there is a comparative analysis of the traditional interpretation and the newly emerged interpretation of each article in EU competition law.In Article 81(1) EC, cases like CECED comply with the “Modernisation” reform and are based on the economic analysis, but the Wouters case paves the way for taking into consideration the perspective on the conflict of constitutional norm between competition and environmental protection. Similar bifurcation is found in cases of Article 82 EC. Cases like DSD follow the economics-based interpretation while cases under Article 86(2) EC exemption underline the non-competition values like environmental protection. State aid rules allow the Member States' wide discretion on environmental policy, but the State Aid Action Plan launched by “Modernisation” reform introduces the economic analysis and narrows its discretion.Finally, this article presents the tentative theory concerning the conflict between environmental policy and EU competition law. This comprises two-way interpretations: the interpretation in the context of “Modernisation” reform and the interpretation in the context of the European Social Model. In the present, it is needed to grasp cases from this two-way perspective.