4Kids Threatened with Delisting from NY Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) has warned 4Kids Entertainment that the children’s entertainment distributor may be delisted from the stock exchange as a result of its market capitalization falling below the $75 million minimum required to be listed on the NYSE. 4Kids Entertainment presently distributes English language adaptations of anime series Yu-Gi-Oh, Sonic X, and Dinosaur King (Kodai Oja Kyoryu King D-Kids Adventure), and the live action Japanese series Kamen Rider Dragon Knight (Kamen Rider Ryuki). 4Kids has been steadily losing money since at least 2008.
Source: ICv2
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If you would stop hacking apart other people’s work and produce some good quality productions of their own (the 2003 TMNT series was definitely watchable, and good at times; this coming from a guy who grew up on TMNT), maybe they wouldn’t be in this mess.
I’m not sure if they’re capable anymore, however, since they’re too concerned over not offending parents, even though most parents wouldn’t give a second thought to the stuff they cut out. Some of the most endearing shows (Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs) have mildly offensive elements, and they aired with little trouble. When companies roll out indistinquishable sanitized entertainment that blends in with everything else, it’s no wonder kids lose interest pretty quickly. They’re not stupid; marketability will only get you so far, and kids can tell if a show is souless pretty easily.
To be fair, 4Kids also lost a money in the effort of trying to launch its Chaotix collectable game franchise that didn’t take off. After CEO Al Kahn publicly saying that “anime is dead” a few years ago, 4Kids is now trying to get back to its core, profitable business model of licensing and distributing anime and Asian cartoons for American mainstream distribution. The question is whether it will be enough, or if it’s too late to return to core focus now.
4Kids’ financial woes stretch back over several fiscal quarters, but are closely tied to Kahn betting big on certain projects or anticipating a larger return on projects where commercial or advertising support simply wasn’t there. I don’t enjoy a vast majority of the titles they distribute, but the company’s decline is tied far more to their management practices, than to their content.