Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Isn't More Anime Shown On American TV?
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Chichiryuutei
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I think the OP has a very valid question. Tbh, 18+ years ago (I landed in the States in '99) there were very few options for cartoon (muñequitos in Spanish... AKA anime). To me it was an extremely sad time (background: in Venezuela, anime was huge. Everyone in school talked about it) I was in a foreign country, didn't speak the language and the kid thing that'd bring me a smile was nowhere to be found (funny thing F1 was also non-existent in the States).
Maybe from the TV network's financial sense because after a couple of years I saw a commercial for Toonami and then the rest is history. Now, people in high school started talking about anime and it stated getting popular and becoming cool. Is Toonami still needed? I'd say yes. There are still lots of kids (middle/high school students) that can't (or whose parent can't/won't) afford a Funimation/Crunchyroll/AnimeStrike subscription and Toonami becomes a good enough option to create new fans. It's sad though, it has taken so long for anime to become huge in the States and yet it has been huge in Asia/Europe/Latin America for the last 30+ years (dubbing really helps fans connect faster than subs sorry... Not sorry  ).
Also, the internet did blow open the gates... Because we didn't need to wait for a TV network to watch anime (Saint Seiya never took off here but thanks to the internet I was able to finish the Hades saga in Spanish). |
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Stuart Smith
 Posts: 1298 |
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All but one of those shows are no longer airing due to poor ratings, so evidently not. The market for anime, and action animation in general, is gone from television. -Stuart Smith |
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theMagician
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I agree with that. TV Anime in Japan works because there you will be the very first to see the show and you can talk about it with your friends. Similar to how GoT for example is for us. For America and Europe its different since we wont be able to see the premier anyway we will go for the best Subs (or raws if you understand japanese) you can get and watch it whenever we want. For me TV is a dying medium of the older generations. While Onlinestreaming is getting more and more popular. The only reason i have a TV at home is to connect it to my PC and watch streams, animes or movies. You can even watch the biggest sportsevents online nowadays so you wont even miss that. |
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belvadeer
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This surprises absolutely no one.
Honestly, the U.S. really needed to grow up when it came to these so-called controversial topics. Some I can understand; I'm sure a majority of anime watchers didn't want to see an eight year girl's underwear flashed in a closeup (which Japan thinks is okay because "little girls are always pure"). However, writing around violence and death was pretty stupid, as was the idea of trying to "paint over" Japanese foods and terms because of xenophobic parents or because these executives assumed North American kids were too stupid to understand these things. Unfortunately, the latter practice is still being done to shows like Yo-kai Watch, which is just senseless in this day and age. |
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Heishi
 Posts: 1331 |
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I've come to the realization that eventually online streaming will become the norm and tv will become a dying medium, anime in particular.
Why wait to watch something you wanna see when you have your physical copies and/or streaming services? It seems as long as new media gets bigger, the old media will get smaller. |
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SWAnimefan
Posts: 634 |
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Not entirely true. Television isn't dying, but it's evolving. In from the 50s to the 80s it was through radio transmissions, in the 80s-10s it was mostly via cable or satellite. But with Smart TVs, you got Internet TV with actual streaming from Netflix. So TV is virtually now Internet TV. That is why we are seeing networks like CBS pushing it's All Access service with their new Star Trek series. Within 20 years, all major networks will do the same and provide viewing of all their shows without having to pay syndication rights. As for Anime dying, I really doubt it happen. There will always be a niche, especially on the internet. And even with celebrities watching it, how could it really die? The real question is how the Japanese production companies will act? Will Japanese Networks continue funding? Or will funding shift to a global market? Will they open up their libraries and provide translations host their own streaming service? Or will they depend on Crunchyroll and similar websites? This is the real question. One thing is for sure, if they streamed, they no longer have to deal with licensing issues. Which Macross fans know all too well. Though they have to work out something in regards to Dubbing. :p |
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Jonny Mendes
 Posts: 997 Location: Europe |
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Is worse than i tough. At least in my country they are still airing those. |
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Mohawk52
 Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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The reason is multi-level as Justin mentioned. American TV is a business that lives or dies by advertising revenue. That's the same anywhere in the world that a channel is not sponsored, or supported by a government tax, or license fee to have a TV in one's home, or donations by "members" also know as "subscription fees". Advertisers want lots and lots of people viewing their ads so viewer ratings are the crop harvest they strive for and expect the broadcasters, local, national, and international to give them. That's the pressure on broadcasters who then must find the content that will give them the maximum audience that they can charge advertisers maximum fees to bid for. That's why networks can ask for ten's of millions for ten seconds of break time between a World Series, World Cup, Super Bowl, etc... and maybe a few hundred to a little over a thousand for 30 seconds between DBZ, etc. In American Broadcast industry, all content was and still might be known as "Fill between commercial breaks". (Yes I did work there for most of the 1980s at ABC in NYC.) Anime even in the "bubble" days just didn't pull the big viewer ratings that all TV broadcasters needed and wanted so it got sidelined, or dropped altogether after giving it a try. In the UK animation took a big torpedo below the waterline when the govenrment banned sponsorship of productions by "junk food, sweets, and fizzy drinks" manufacturers in an attempt to reduce obesity and tooth decay in young children, ( which failed BTW). This has all but eliminated all new productions by non BBC sponsored (ITV) production companies. a vacuum filled by "Kids" channels on "Freeview" or Sky who's content is predominately old US Disney live action or animated syndications or other US syndications for children. Very few, and usually the mainstream, anime like Pokemon, Digimon, etc. So if it wasn't for Crunchyroll, Funimation, Amazon Prime, and more recently Netflix providing content it's either bought or rental discs for anime in the UK. A struggling market still on life support because of infection by pirating.
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6082 |
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...Whereas the Japanese have this thing for editing out minors smoking, adding in black mist so that you don't see characters maimed after the fact or doing certain things to each other, and altering scenes from the original manga when adapting it to TV. And yes even occasionally pruning out episodes of shows for reasons. So yeah not that different.
Don't know where Tekkoshocon is so I don't think so.
....We had to sit through the entire Saiyan and the first half of the Frieza arc on a loop for how long until Funimation got the rights and dubbed the rest of the series?
People were actually betting on a forty something year old anime about an alien cat to do business....in America.....on Disney X-D of all places? Last edited by BadNewsBlues on Thu Jun 08, 2017 9:26 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Mr. Oshawott
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Albeit not in the same context, Pokémon Sun and Moon just became the most recent casualty of censorship when it particularly comes to death scenes. |
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DjangoDCCX
Posts: 16 |
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It should be pretty obvious at this point that the average anime series isn't mainstream enough to air on cable television compared to shows like Pokemon. Never mind that cable subscriptions are declining thanks to Netflix and other streaming services (and bad original programming and the ones in charge ruining their own networks out of fear for low ratings which they brought upon themselves, but that's my opinion). We're not talking about Bollywood movies and telenovelas, we're talking about a medium that's too niche even for the average comic book reader.
There's also the matter of the length of series; entertainment and lifestyle networks in-general rely on reruns. A long-runner like One Piece can fill their schedule, but there's no way the average network will take a chance on a show that only lasts twelve or twenty-six episodes, even if they only show it once a week. Finally, one simple fact of life that viewers fail to take into consideration when they complain about any programming change a network takes is that they are a minority. Viewership, demographics, and ratings will always matter when it comes to any kind of programming on any kind of service. Don't like it? Cut the cord and join the club. For me personally, to watch the dubbed version of a show I've already seen last year on some random network, the outlet would also have to be one I would want to watch on a regular basis, not some kiddy channel with shows that are simply not for me. Nostalgia and fanboy appeal are simply not a good enough reason to justify watching anime on cable, as such, its viewing audience loses all rights to complain about such things like this because the situation will never change. Instead of airing anime, these networks should be producing some mature animation of their own. Even if it doesn't end the cycle of "animation for thirteen year-old boys vs mature-cartoons-getting-screwed-on-children's-television", if the show is a success, viewers will love it and at least the network can make a profit. |
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belvadeer
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Oh for the love of... It seems we're never going to grow out of this "protecting the children" era, are we? Funny thing is, it's all so inconsistent. There was a time they would censor things like cartoon characters vomiting, but only after it was permitted the first time (Ren & Stimpy shows them puking regularly, Rocko's Modern Life blacks out a vomiting scene, but retains the sound effects, and now most modern cartoons show puking like it's going out of style). As for that example you linked, it edits out the part with Meowth's spirit going back to his body, but he mentions "a long tunnel " anyway. Who are they trying to kid here? |
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Mohawk52
Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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There is still that old western, (mostly US) dogma that "animation, (cartoons) are just for kids".
I mean I still get an ear full from her-indoors of "watching cartoons at your age. Don't you feel ashamed?" 
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Spawn29
Posts: 551 |
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We had anime on TV before the 2000's like Sci-Fi's anime block in the 90's from 1993-1999. We also had Starz's anime block that kick off in 1999 up until around 2006 or so. I don't get why people act like Toonami, Fox Box, KidsWB! or Jetix was the only anime on TV. There was anime on HBO and G4 as well. Some people must have only been living in a children's entertainment bubble growing up. Not to mention most people didn't care about the shows airing on CN expect for kids under the age of 12.
If you guys are on old message boards back in the day, anime fans could careless about Pokemon or the shows airing on Toonami in the late 90's and early-mid 2000's. Pokemon was consider to be a joke by many anime fans at the time (The people on these boards were teenagers and adults). As for anime not being on TV as it used to be. Times have change since people can have Netflix, Hulu and other stuff to stream anime. Modern Toonami did help newer anime like Attack on Titan and Sword Art Online to be more well known to the casual anime fans that don't follow streaming. By the early 2000's, the Internet was a huge thing and dial up was close to being dead by 2002. Little did people know that the Internet would change everything after the early 2000's. |
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DerekL1963
 Subscriber Posts: 1117 Location: Puget Sound |
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And this remains a widely held attitude despite decades of Fox's Sunday evening block... Probably because said block hasn't exactly pushed the boundaries when it comes to animation. |
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