Nihon TV actually aired the fewest new anime of any major broadcaster over this period, but their slate is made up of a decent percentage of series that are somewhat notable.
General boilerplate stuff:
If you’re curious about the details, you can find the data I’ve gathered on this spreadsheet. Note on the format: the master list has just the networks, timeslots, and years of airing. Other sheets contain the shows aired in a given year and those aired on non-Japanese TV, with relevant links for the numerous series for which the Japanese wikipedia page didn’t provide sufficient information on the timeslot.
For each broadcaster, I’ll be asking two questions. First, which, if any slots did they have dedicated to anime in general? To qualify as an anime slot for the purposes of this exercise, a timeslot has to have aired premieres of at least 3 TV anime from 1994 to 2000. This excludes, for example, the Fuji TV Sunday 18:30 slot, which has been running Sazae-san for a really long time. I’m more interested in timeslots that would have been available to new shows during this period.
Second, which, if any shows did that broadcaster air after midnight? I want to give as complete a view as possible on the stance different companies took in regards to airing anime late at night. Since I’ve been poring over the data, I already have a decent idea of what the answer is going to be, but it’s neat to look at how different broadcasters’ stances were during this period.
Show title [month of first episode airing]
Monday 19:00
Street Fighter II V [04-1995]
Bucket de Gohan [01-1996]
Ganbarist! Shun [07-1996]
Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo [04-1997]
Inu-Yasha [10-2000]
Black Jack (TV 2004) [10-2004]
Black Jack 21 [04-2006]
Kekkaishi [10-2006]
Aki no Mystery Hour (Aired both Meitantei Conan and Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo) [10-2007]
Yatterman (TV 2008) [01-2008]
Meitantei Conan (from Monday 19:30) [10-2008]
(Meitantei Conan switched slots to Saturday 18:00 in April of 2009 and was replaced with the variety program Super Surprise.)
Monday 19:30
Mahou Kishi Rayearth [10-1994]
Mahou Kishi Rayearth II [04-1995]
Detective Conan [01-1996]
Yatterman (TV 2008, from Monday 19:00) [11-2008]
(Yatterman switched slots to Sunday 7:00 in April of 2009 and was replaced with the variety program Super Surprise.)
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Late Night Programs:
Berserk (Tuesday 25:45, 1997)
Master Keaton (Monday 24:50, 1998)
Hidamari no Ki (Tuesday 24:50, 2000)
Hajime no Ippo (Tuesday 24:50, 2000)
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Comments:
-It’s worth noting that the Hidamari-Ippo combo marked the beginning of one of the more fun timeslots of the aughts.
-Nihon TV’s programming seems, at least at a glance, more targeted towards mainstream, older Japanese people than that of other networks, focusing around popular and/or culturally eminent shonen and seinen source material. Every series but one (Street Fighter) of the twelve on their Monday/Late Night blocks during 1994-2000 was a manga adaptation, as well as twelve of the seventeen total.
-Rayearth and DNA^2 would be counterexamples to the general hypothesis that Nihon TV was always targeting a more mainstream audience, though they, like Street Fighter, came earlier in the decade.
-As I mentioned at the beginning, there wasn’t a whole ton of anime airing on Nihon TV period during this time frame. It’s possible they were generally targeting the sort of audience that would be interested in the sorts of anime they ended up airing with the rest of their programming and didn’t really want to mix up their demographic math when picking anime. It’d be interesting to look at what some of their other typical programs were at this time.