JOEX-DTV (channel 5), branded as TV Asahi, and better known as Tele Asa (テレ朝), is a Japanese television station serving the Kanto region as the flagship station of the All-Nippon News Network. It is owned-and-operated by the TV Asahi Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of TV Asahi Holdings Corporation [ja], itself controlled by The Asahi Shimbun Company. Its studios are located in Roppongi, Minato, Tokyo. TV Asahi is one of the "Big Six" broadcasters based in Tokyo, alongside Nippon Television, TBS, TV Tokyo, NHK General TV, and Fuji Television.

After NHK General TV, NTV, and Radio Tokyo Television were launched in 1953 and 1955, TV has become an important medium in Japan. However, most of the programs that were aired at that time were vulgar which caused well-known critic Sōichi Ōya to mention in a program that TV made people in Japan "a nation of 100 million idiots"; those criticisms already gave birth to the idea of opening an education-focused TV station. On February 17, 1956, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications issued frequency allocations, and the Kantō region obtained three licenses in total. Among the three, one of them is used by NHK Educational TV, while the other two were open for private bidding. Among those bidders are film production companies Toho and Toei Company, radio broadcasters Nippon Cultural Broadcasting and Nippon Broadcasting System, and educational publishing group Obunsha [ja]. On July 4, 1957, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications later decided to unify those applications into Tokyo Educational Television (as its tentative name) which was later obtained on July 8.

On October 10, 1957, Tokyo Educational Television held its first shareholders meeting and changed its company name to Nippon Educational Television Co., Ltd. (NET). On November 1 of the same year, the broadcaster was later established. After Fuji Television obtained their broadcast licenses, they set an official start date of broadcast on March 1, 1959. NET advanced their start date of broadcast a month earlier (February 1, 1959). On Christmas Eve 1958, NET began its test transmissions. On January 9 of the following year, their broadcast license was approved, and test transmissions continued every night throughout the month.

At the time of founding, the following locations were considered for the building of its headquarters:

NET took these considerations:

After a careful consideration of these four conditions, a 9,100 square meter site at the location of the former Spanish embassy to Japan, was selected by Toei.

At 9:55a.m. (JST) on February 1, 1959, NET signed on, airing at least 6.5 hours of programming per day. By April, this figure was extended to 10 hours. With the launch of the Mainichi Broadcasting System and Kyushu Asahi Broadcasting on March 1, 1959, NET programming started airing on those mentioned broadcasters. Shortly after the start of broadcasts, NET broadcast their first live program, which is the wedding of Crown Prince (now Emperor Emeritus) Akihito and Empress Michiko held on April 10 of the same year.

At the time, its broadcasting license dictated that the network was required to devote at least 50% of its airtime to educational programming, and at least 30% of its airtime to children's educational programming. However, the for-profit educational television model eventually proved to be a failure. In July 1959, average ratings of the network were less than 5%.