It was a big honour last year for AKB48 to appear in the New Year’s Eve extravaganza that is Kouhaku Uta Gassen but in the details announced today of who’s been lined up for this year’s edition, AKB48 have been snubbed. But they’re not the only idol group deemed not good enough to appear – Morning Musume who have appeared on the show for the last 10 years have also been ignored. C-ute and Berryz Koubou who debuted last year also have not been invited too. It’s no surprise with Morning Musume as their popularity is on the wane but I really thought that AKB48 had a chance seeing as their last single have done extremely well. But SPEED will be back plus Perfume and Girl Next Door will be making their debut.
The hosts for the bash will be Yukie Nakama (red team) and Masahiro Nakai of SMAP (white team). Who will win this year’s contest?
Here’s a clip of AKB48 performing Aitakatta at last year’s event:
I was also upset not to see AKB48 on this list for this year – i thought they had done more than enough to earn their place as well over the course of the last 12 months!
This event, Kohaku, sucks. There was huge disrespect shown for Hello! Project’s performance and the old fuddy-duddies in the audience were roaming around on the stage during the performance. How rude. H!P is better of never showing up on that program ever again, and the same for AKB48. Idol music deserves better!
Who picks the artists for this event anyway? NHK execs or those in the music industry? Kouhaku is seriously lacking in the idol department for this year’s event. We can only hope that next year both H!P and AKB48 will have had such a tremendous 12 months that they can’t be ignored for the 2009 show.
[...] female artists in 2009. They’ll also be performing in this year’s NHK Kouhaku Uta Gassen (they failed to make the cut last year). Their main appeal with fans to seems to be their availability. AKB48 regularly holds [...]