AKB48 Producer Yasushi Akimoto To Collaborate With Magazine "Shukan Bunshun"
Shukan Bunshun had published two scandalous articles about two AKB48 members. One was Minami Takahashi's mother arrested for committing a lewd act with an underage boy.
The other one was more recent with Rino Sashihara's ex-boyfriend talking about their past romance and releasing photos. These two stories greatly damaged AKB48's innocent image. AKB48's general producer Yasushi Akimoto has now decided to use AKB48's concert publishing rights to exchange with the publisher. In return, the publisher has to stop writing any stories that might damage the image of AKB48. This exchange has been labeled in the entertainment industry as an "evil reconciliation".
AKB48 already has 8 singles that sold over 1 million copies. They are constantly making money and was one of the highest earning musical acts in the world in 2011. Shukan Bunshun's two published article were damaging to AKB48. Akimoto knows that there will be much more, and even heard that the magazine are holding on to more Rino Sashihara pictures; some that are worse than the ones posted. If Akimoto could not tell the publisher to be quiet about it, then he might as well work with them.
It has been reported that the two parties will reconcile on the terms of AKB48's Tokyo Dome concert in August and Atsuko Maeda's official graduation. The publishing rights of these two events will be given to Shukan Bunshun's publisher Bunshun to print and publish. There were news that AKB48 had already reconciled with other magazine companies including FRIDAY and FLASH, that is why those magazines had dropped writing any news regarding AKB48.
With AKB48's Tokyo Dome concert in August and Maeda's graduation, both news are extremely big and any publisher with information on it will sell very well.
Source:
jpopasia