Ask John: What’s the Future of Anime on TV?
Question:
A few weeks ago Adult Swim pushed Code Geass and Moribito to the 5:00 and 5:30 slots and Toonami has ended their run. Why is Cartoon Network airing less anime?
What is the future of anime on TV, since Adult Swim is moving anime to dead hours, Fuse is dropping its block, and Sci-fi is moving anime to one night only from which it was originally launched both Monday & Tuesday?
Answer:
Several years ago there was a common sentiment among American skeptics that anime was merely a passing fad – a novelty import that exploded in popularity in America and influenced American movies and comics because of its fresh uniqueness, but was destined to quickly vanish. The American anime boom has lasted long enough to outlive the classification of temporary novelty, but mainstream America’s fascination with Japanese animation may be waning after a decade long surge of interest. Anime is not a passing fad in America because there’s been a devoted fan following for anime in America for over 20 years, and I wholeheartedly believe that there will always be obsessive American anime otaku. However, declining domestic anime sales and drastic, sudden decreases of interest in anime broadcast on American television suggest that many Americans are now less fascinated by anime.
The Cartoon Network has admitted forthrightly that the Toonami programming block has been abandoned in response to diminishing ratings. Adult Swim has also confirmed that viewer response to the broadcast of Code Geass has been poor. In 2008 so far, the most watched Saturday night broadcasts on Adult Swim among the network’s target audience of 18-34 year old men have attracted a high of slightly over 400,000 viewers. The most watched episode of Code Geass ever broadcast on Adult Swim was the series’ premier episode that attracted roughly 368,000 young adult male viewers. Since the series’ spring debut, even re-broadcasts of Death Note and Cowboy Bebop episodes have drawn more viewers than premier episodes of Code Geass. And while Bleach, one of Adult Swim’s most popular anime titles, can occasionally attract over 400,000 viewers, no anime title on Adult Swim is remotely as popular as domestic animated series like Family Guy that routinely attract more than a million viewers.
Fundimentally, anime is Japanese entertainment intended for Japanese audiences. After a number of years of American television viewers tuning in because anime is unusual, I think we’re now seeing signs of average American television viewers becoming accustomed to anime and losing interest in it. If even America’s hardcore otaku community frequently bemoans the repetition and unoriginality of contemporary anime, it should come as little surprise to find casual viewers even less inclined to continue tuning in.
There will always be anime imported into America, but anime will only appear on American TV if viewers watch it in significant numbers. While there was, and probably still is a remote possibility that anime could establish a permanent niche on American television with viewer support and demand, present circumstances suggest that the early 2000s have been a transitory boom and the future of anime on American television will settle back into the pattern that characterized the 60s through 80s and early 90s that saw only occasional anime titles slip onto American TV. With so many American broadcasters trimming their anime broadcasts, it seems unrealistic to expect a sudden resurgence of anime programming on American television networks in the foreseeable future.
Actually, what we may be seeing now is a transition from anime on television to anime broadcast online. Vuze, Youtube, BOST TV, Crunchyroll, Hulu, and Joost, among others, are all now making significant advances in substituting for, and replacing traditional television broadcast. Online distribution allows for much more flexibility than traditional television broadcast, including options for selectable translations, rapid export from Japan to the rest of the world, the potential for selectively targeted advertising, the ability to reach viewers on their schedule, lowered distribution costs, and effective targeting of the core audience through multiple distribution tools that the target demographic uses. So, in fact, the future of anime on TV may be actually anime online.
Related Posts
About The Author
john
Add a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
You tough on something rather important in your article John, which is that Cartoon Network’s expectations for anime’s performance on Adult Swim has become increasingly unrealistic over the years. It’s obvious that [as] dramatically favors home-grown content over its imports; but their observation of Japanese animation (and its fans) as an exotic and sometimes inferior form of animation entertainment has evolved to the point where [as] has ultimately lost interest.
Seeking ratings percentages where anime equals original programming has never and will never be a smart business plan… Similarly, seeking a viewership return for nontraditional anime–such as MORIBITO–that paralells the succeess of more standard fare along the lines of INUYASHA or FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST, is just as faulty an ideal.
Some of Adult Swim’s schedule changes are slightly ironic if not contradictory, since the sub-network has witnessed a dramatic decrease in ratings in a year-to-year comparison in all segments; not just for anime.
I have to wonder if the reason some series don’t get very high ratings on Cartoon Network simply because people just aren’t interested in THAT SERIES, NOT that they’ve lost interest in anime overall. When a new series airs, most people are inclined to catch the first episode to see if they think it’s worth watching, and then only if the initial premise or TV spots, or other marketing draws their attention to it. If that first episode doesn’t grab them, ratings will drop off, yet the network will continue showing the rest of the season/series because they’ve already paid licensing fees for it.
So maybe the decline in viewership of low-rating series on CN isn’t because people are starting to lack interest but because that series just doesn’t mesh with the audience. If reruns of Cowboy Bebop — a series that is 10 years old — garner better ratings than the first episode of Code Geass, maybe this speaks to the comparison of quality between the two series, not the apathy of anime fans. If the anime fad in general has truly died down, these classic reruns would have similar or lower ratings than these newly broadcast series, but they do not, because people still like the older series. Personally, if a new series does not grab me by the first two episodes, I stop watching it — not because I’ve lost interest in anime as a whole but because I shouldn’t be forced to continue watching something that either doesn’t grab me, disagrees with me on a personal or moral level, or that I think could be executed better. There is a common misconception among those who aren’t familiar to anime that an anime fan will automatically like any anime series simply because it is anime, but this is simply not true. Even casual anime fans are as discerning about what anime they watch as non-anime fans are about their own viewing habits.
Given all of this, my question is: Who decides what series are shown on CN? And how to they arrive at this decision? Do they pick up what the North American fans are clamoring about, or do they nab something just because it was popular in Japan? If they’re basing their decisions purely on the level of Japanese popularity, that could be their first big mistake, as Japanese popularity never automatically equals American popularity. Or, god forbid, do they choose series based on the fallacious “anime fans will watch ANYTHING” supposition?
To answer the questions in your final paragraph, the people at Cartoon Network who make the decision to air the show are a combination of efforts from the programming director (in charge of the programming block), and any executive, perhaps the vice president of content acquisitions, who usually oversees the integration of co-productions or foreign productions into the line-up. Adult Swim is a slightly different case, considering they are/aren’t their own network depending which legal/business perspective you look at it.
In any case, the decision to air an anime series on Cartoon Network is reached months before its domestic release here, stateside. I want to say “several” months, but since that isn’t the case with every program, I’ll leave that statement as it is. If you’re talking about an anime such as MORIBITO or others, that entered western shores cold, as in little to no merchandising support ahead of time, then it’s merely a roll of the dice. In any case, if the future broadcast of a title is negotiated five to seven months ahead of time, there’s little else to rely upon other than the word network executives receive on behalf of the content distributor.
Unfortunately, some executives, such as Mike Lazzo and others, have vacillated over the years between appreciating the diversity that anime brings, and treating Japanese animation as a gimmick to acquire new advertisement.