I agree casual fans may be a lost cause, and by that extension, they aren’t dedicated to the industry for the long run. They only care about what’s happening at the moment so long as it sustains their interest.

I advise an anime club on a college campus, and have met maybe 2 people who are dedicated to anime and supporting the market. The rest are more content to download it illegally and consider the size of their collection a badge of nerdom. There was actually a girl who proudly watched pirated DVDs of Bleach and actually got mad at me when I suggested I would buy it at Walmart because she claimed Walmart is evil. I guess breaking the law and contributing to the troubles of an industry is less reprehensible than siding on the popular side of pop politics.

I hardcore friend of mine suggested I carry a picture of my collection around, and if one of the nerds boasted of how large his downloaded collection was, I could whip out mine and say “This is my collection. There are over 1000 DVDs there. Your collection is 0.”

The joys of being elitist!

These kids are more or less poor, spending what little money they have on the basics and whatever other hobbies they have (they really spend it on anime when I have a vendor come in for events. It’s always Magic cards). I don’t expect them to have money to spend, yet stealing isn’t the answer, either (and they’ve done that to the vendor as well!).

I concede I’ll watch fansubs YouTube, so I’m not an anime saint, but the second I find that series is licensed, I never turn back.

I think dedication really isn’t the problem. Illegal anime may be chipping away potential profit, but the exploding anime popularity is bound to compensate at least for the hardcore fan audiences. I generally think casual anime consumers are a lost cause because it seems like they don’t particularly care whether they get their anime from BestBuy or from YouTube. From my standpoint, it’s just unreasonable to expect the same consumer behavior from casual fans that you can expect from hardcore fans.
Why paid-for American TV broadcasting for anime with limited appeal isn’t such a good idea is because the target audience–the hardcore fans– already knows where to get anime years before a potential broadcast might be scheduled. It makes sense to market (appealing) official anime releases to the same people that rely on unauthorised anime distribution, but apart from Bandai Entertainment I haven’t seen anyone else practice this. Bandai Visual USA was promising, but….

Interesting idea, but I doubt the R1 undustry is paying out to air anime on Adult Swim because I wouldn’t imagine there being much befefit for them. In Japan, I would imagine if producers are paying to air anime with no returns (which is highly unlikely), the only reason I could think of is they’re doing it because of their personal ownership of the anime. I really doubt this, however.

If this is happpening, it’s more likely they’re airing episodes to act as an advertisment for DVDs and merchandising, something that is much more influential over in Japan than America.

This stragedy wouldn’t work in America, where we have limited merchandising (mostly imports, which don’t do much, if anything for licensors) and a niche DVD market. From my experience with the anime fans I’m exposed to, they prefer to watch anime for free on Adult Swim or download it illegally.

I know these are just a very small sampling of fans, but it seems today’s fans are pretty poor in their dedication as a whole, opting to avoid giving any money at all to the people that bring us anime. That said, it’s unlikely these companies would pay to air anime as a way of advertising, because the fans won’t buy the DVDs. It would make more sense to just buy some commericial time during ATHF. If they want to watch, they’ll have to pay. Or download anime illegally and rip some more holes in the sinking ship.

Then again, for all I know, the R1 industry may already be “paying” Adult Swim and Sci-Fi to air the anime they do.