Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Isn't More Anime Shown On American TV?
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6082 |
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Were those animes being aired on HBO or G4 anywhere as memorable or iconic as DragonBall Z, Sailor Moon, Gundam Wing, Robotech, Voltron, or Big O? Did they air on those networks for an extended period of time? If not that might give you your answers
As I kid I was watching PG-13/R rated fair as early as probably 7 or 8 and even then I mostly watched old cartoons on CN back in the day....not everyone was lucky to be able to do something like that.....much less have access to TV.
Don't know if you know this but about half of the people watching CN back in the day and even now were/are over that age.
....Might be getting senile in my late 20's but Pokemon never aired on Toonami at least not until Kids WB bit the dust around 08 or so.
And these people opinions are supposed to be taken as objective fact and of some relevance why? Like regardless of what they thought at the time and still do, show was a cultural success and phenomenon (helped in great deal by the games).
Hate to see what she'd think if she caught you watching porn in the daytime. |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Well, there are still parents like that--quite a bunch, really, because there are now a lot of parents who grew up under the Reagan and Bush Sr. years, presidencies with very strong "family values" traits to them. We're also seeing a rise in xenophobia in the United States as of late due to a large-scale Milgram effect. So I don't think it's senseless. Regrettable and unfortunate, yes, but there are logical reasons behind them. (Kids seem to be okay with a lot of violence and seem eager to learn new cultures--it's entirely the very protective adults' doing, and it's been this way from the start.)
Those are very good points: I feel that should streaming become the new standard, the sponsors are going to move there too. The original appeal of cable and satellite TV was that you didn't have to watch commercials on it. Then, only the channels you had to pay extra for had commercials. Now, they all have commercials. I predict the same thing with streaming, as the money has to come from somewhere, and I doubt companies like Netflix and Hulu can keep up with rising viewer numbers. (I know your point is that anime on television does not bring in the ad revenue that most other types of programming does.) The United States made new advertising laws through the 90's too--it didn't scuttle animated content, though it DID change animated content made through the decade. The main thing was a ban on commercials in the same franchise as the TV show it's from, though it was loopholed not long afterwards by going to the big theater screens (the Disney execs were NOT pleased with Pixar and Up's lack of merchandisability), and on The Hub/Discovery Kids, Hasbro's own TV channel, putting commercials for the product right before or after the program.
Actually, Pokémon has not been available on broadcast for a long while now. (Or was that part of your point?)
Usually, this is due to the rather complex rules for a network's standards & practices department, which in turn is due to multiple people writing the rules for it, some of which don't mesh with others quite so well. The inconsistencies you see are likely some writers deciding to loophole them while others play it straight. Some other cases are the creative team tricking the S&P people or the S&P people missing something. (The Ren and Stimpy example was most likely this.) A couple of examples from western animation: ReBoot - ABC allowed its children's shows to have women with large breasts, but they were not allowed to be clearly defined. The intent was to not only downplay their sexual appeal, but to discourage character designers from making such characters in the first place. Most of ABC's creative teams did exactly as such. Mainframe Entertainment, on the other hand, chose to loophole this with what they call the "uniboob," seen on characters like Dot and Mouse, in which their clothing stretched taut to make it look like one long breast instead of two lumps. (Cartoon Network did not have such a rule, which is why ReBoot's fourth season did away with that--it's not due to getting better computers.) Batman Beyond - This series had a special in which the Joker was resurrected and was intended to be the Joker's last appearance in the DCAU, timeline-wise. The original plan to end the Joker was to have him get shot, only to find out that the WB's S&P did not allow anyone to be hit by a bullet, not even villains. (They did let characters die, in spite of the "never say die" reputation--the words just couldn't be mentioned.) Instead, the scene was changed so the Joker would meet his end by a rather painful-sounding electrocution (the original scene had Joker take the bullet comparatively quietly), which was actually more disturbing--but because Warner Bros. S&P had no rule about characters killed by electrocution in children's programming, they allowed it. Note that S&P does not always have to be followed, but if it doesn't, the series can be put in danger of cancellation. In the case of The Simpsons episode "Homer's Phobia," which had homophobia as a central topic of the episode, it went so far against Fox's S&P rules of no depictions of gay romance that the Gracie Films people were given a list of S&P strikes dozens of pages long specifically for that episode with the evaluation that the episode should never be aired and the staff should pretend it doesn't exist. They aired "Homer's Phobia" anyway, because they knew there was no way Fox would pull The Simpsons off, especially during its Golden Age when everybody liked it. I'd say this is also a major reason anime gets hit by the cutting room so hard and is the real reason for 4Kids Entertainment's rock-bottom reputation: They had to abide by whatever standards & practices rules were used on the channels they were airing, and children's programming on broadcast channels have the strictest rules. Cartoon Network's rules were, and still are, a lot more lax than that of Kids' WB!, so when Pokémon made the jump to cable, a lot less was removed (and even more still for the movies, with no such rules to worry about except national obscenity laws and what will get what MPAA rating). Notice that when companies like Viz and FUNimation got their shows on broadcast, they were cut up just as much.
It's present in Japan too, of course. What are or have been the highest-rated anime in terms of viewership? One Piece, Pretty Cure, Sazae-san, Doraemon, Crayon Shin-chan, Pokémon, Yo-Kai Watch. All of them were aimed at children. This multitude of anime aimed at teenagers and adults are a drop in the bucket compared to those shows, and the Japanese mainstream has a stereotype of anime viewers as dorks way more negative than they do here. Last edited by leafy sea dragon on Thu Jun 08, 2017 1:04 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6082 |
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I always found it funny Warner Bros had issues with the original cut of The Return Of The Joker movie, but yet had no problems with Mask Of The Phantasm. Though if it was intended to be apart of the TV show instead of Stand Alone Movie that would certainly explain things. |
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2584 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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I think the biggest difference is in how anime is showcased between the countries. In Japan, anime has mostly moved over to late-night, where it's literally nothing but an infomercial for the eventual home video release (& if it's based on a manga then it's also effectively advertising that, as well). Sure, there are some morning shows & the (now rare) primetime programs, bur they are no longer the majority. In essence, the production committees are paying the TV networks for the use of the timeslots they purchase to air shows on, so the networks are getting exactly what they were looking for.
In America, though, entertainment programs are (hopefully) meant to have longer tails, with the network having actual say & control over the product, like Justin said. Anime just doesn't mesh with that idea, so it's harder to put on TV over here unless you have someone actually championing for it (like Toonami has). Granted, I guess maybe an anime company over here could theoretically buy late-night infomercial timeslots & simply air their products there (kind of like what CrunchyRoll did to get its Holiday special on actual TV), but what would the point by then? |
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belvadeer
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I am aware, leafy, as we've discussed before. The problem is these same parents expect everything and everyone to cater to their whims because "we have children and they need to be raised in a wholesome way", which is actually a euphemism for "we're just lazy and we expect everyone else to raise our kids instead of us", and "everyone" includes the Disney Channel. What I'm referring to as senseless is the catering to the ignorant parental masses who just hiss and lash out at things they don't understand and want it to be edited, censored or outright excised. It's ridiculous. |
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EricJ2
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Fans heard "US syndicated dub", immediately went into battle mode, and thought it would be another 4Kids chop-up. They couldn't have been MORE WRONG. Although there's still a Sgt.-Frog-dub "hipness" to play up the gags to the kiddies, it's a "hipness" with all the gags translated correctly and capturing the Nobita's-bad-day 9-yo. appeal of the original show perfectly. Pwooosh...When was the last time you saw that happen, off of DVD? 
The problem was more with X-D, and the monster Disney had created trying to keep up with Nick and CN's stoner-anime joneses: Doraemon played as the "B-title" to X-D's big hopes on "The 7D", and....take one look at The 7D, and tell me why they considered the new unknown import title "expendable". Outside of Marvel/Lucas action, there's just no room for funny, intelligent, tasteful coherency on afternoon kids-cable anymore. Japan, you're just too experienced at playing to afternoon school-kids, and sorry, you're too smart and just not tasteless-moronic-idiot enough for the room. (Almost sounds like Kelsey Grammer's Sideshow Bob on The Simpsons: "Treat kids as equals! Respect their intelligence! Bring back cartoons with quality comedy!")
Gargoyles is a very good comparison: I remember Gargoyles being way, wayyy too serial-arc overwritten for its own good, but it aired every day on weekdays, when it could become a regular afterschool thing, and that's the stuff that creates cults. Much as it did for those 80's school-kids who first discovered that there was a running serial plot on Robotech and Star Blazers. But Fox wasn't concerned with what anime they were showing their audience, they were concerned with whether they HAD an anime to show their audience that Warner didn't have, thinking the trend that worked for Pokemon and DBZ would work for them too--Especially if, again, somebody had already done all the hard work and animated it for them, and all they needed to air it was a few weeks in the audio booth. Which was one of the trends that killed off original afternoon-syndicated animation, along with the corporate gobbling-up of independent stations and the new afternoon-housewife market for Dr. Phil. By the time DBZ and Sailor Moon moved to CN in '00, there was no place for the Samurai Pizza Cats dub to show anymore. |
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GOTZFAUST
Posts: 35 |
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I think a more interresting question is how (and why, for others not me), Anime was completly absent before the late 90's in the US.
I think in actuality it works more like this - Anime is never made with international appeal in mind. Cartoons from Europe and so on actually do partner with the big US companies almost from the very start. It is always mass market. Anime is part of the transmedia franchise - all the way back to Astro Boy. One of the sponsors for Astro Boy was from a very specific Japanese product. The ratings were great of course, but growing the media empire of the franchise is almost more important. You know how in commercial breaks there is never products from the actual show - in Japan this doesn't apply. The commercial breaks for Youkai Watch have tons of Youkai Watch products in them. For Japan, it doesn't really make sense to have show over in the US if they can't merchandise anything with it. There is Pokemon which is an example of growing an media empire - while also getting western companies involved from the very beginning. The US in insular with it's media, they never really import, and they have an animation culture on it's own. Not to mention, Japan never approached the US about spreading their anime stuff - bar the few exception of the sixties. Of course over time, US producers eventually approached Japanese networks again - but it never seemed like long duration (the height lasted from mid 90's to mid' 00's), it was almost like in the period where US cartoons kinda lost steam. Adult Swim managed to stick around, mainly because the advertising effect of DVD/Blu Rays and the midnight slot is of course very cheap. Consequently, Anime fans buying home media during the early 2000's was something the fanbase in the West and East had in common. Mainland european countries wanted their own cartoons, but in the beginning actually partnered with Japanese companies for co-productios because they don't have the infrastructure of the US or Japan. Not to mention Japan is very cheap and effiicient (which US companies also made use of). Japan's attitude during that era of licensing of anime was more "sure you can have it, throw a couple bucks". As Italy for example willy nilly just showed over 200 anime during the seventies and eighties. But that was also during the era when TV Anime in Japan were in abundance of shows that were shown during the daytime made for getting actual ratings, rather than to simply sell DVD and Bluray. Especially in the 2000's these types of shows were way less relevant. In my opinion, you really have to have the anime culture being on the screens when TV was the only mass entertainment medium there was. Then you can talk about anime becoming a mainstream stay for TV. |
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epicwizard
Posts: 420 Location: Ashburn, VA |
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Doraemon had no choice but to air on Disney X-D because no other network would've wanted it. The series could've steamed exclusively on Netflix or Hulu instead of airing on American TV, but the Japanese licensors most likely thought that it would best reach audiences through TV and decided to go that route. |
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Paiprince
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Hence why I said most. You're an exception to the rule. Most Asians in the West gravitate towards their own country's media or other Asian country's like Japan and Korea. Anime and Korean Dramas are the most popular with Asians overseas. Westaboos are outliers. |
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DerekL1963
 Subscriber Posts: 1117 Location: Puget Sound |
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Anime wasn't completely absent before the late 90's... MachGoGoGo (adapted as Speed Racer) and Astro Boy aired in the 1960's. Science Ninja Team Gatchaman (adapted as Battle of the Planets), and Space Battleship Yamato (adapted as Star Blazers) aired in the 1970's. Voltron (adapted from Go Lion and Dairugger XV) and Robotech (adapted from Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber Mospeada) appeared in the 1990's. (And those are just the biggest, best known, and most widely distributed... Wikipedia has more details.) Anime was already widely known among geeks by 90's when cable networks started looking for something that was a) cheap (to fill out airtime), and b) not reruns or already in syndication (to provide something new and unique and thus attract viewers). The latter is something whose influence cannot be understated... Non-premium cable channels make their money by charging cable systems a fee for the right to distribute them. And cable systems are only interested in channels that people watch and thus justify paying those fees. Facing a tough uphill battle against established networks and local stations and not having much income... Anime was one of the few products that were both cheap and new. Overall, this had two effects - one positive and one negative. From a positive point of view, the cheap filler of the 60's-80's laid the groundwork for a fandom interested in the cheap filler of the 90's and the fansub and [legal] home video market that emerged in the late 90's and which ultimately lead to the streaming networks of today. From a negative point of view, anime's role as cheap filler from the 60's-70's onward cemented the attitude of the larger public that anime was... cheap filler. Not serious and not worthy of attention. Anime still struggles against that reputation today. It's only been in the last eighteen months or so that the bigger channels have really begun to take it seriously. (And that mostly because they've started to need the niches and long tails to fuel continued growth.) |
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leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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All right then. I would definitely agree it is a symptom of lazy and/or entitled parenting (and every line of work I've had that involves a lot of children has only made me angrier at these bad parents), though that is something that will never go away, as long as there are parents and parental responsibility. I take it you refer to the parents who want to use television (and now YouTube and Netflix) as their babysitters?
That's a difference at the legal sense: In the United States, it's illegal to have commercials for a TV show's merchandise in the show itself (though, as I mentioned above, there are ways to get around that--all of them are centered around the fact that kids watch multiple shows). It was a response to a rise of merchandise-driven Saturday morning cartoons in the 80's and parental opposition to those types of shows, as well as American culture's much dimmer general opinion of merchandise compared to Japan. The law's effects (and I'm sure its intentions) were that there weren't many merchandise-driven cartoons in the 90's, and the ones that were had begun simply as a show and happened to get popular (such as The Powerpuff Girls) or spun off from something else (such as the Sonic the Hedgehog TV shows). Merchandise still makes up a large part of revenue from a children's franchise and is why children's entertainment is top priority for many companies. A show's merch-potential can still make or break its viability in the United States even in the 2010's, such as with Sym-Bionic Titan (which couldn't get a toy line to offset the production costs) and the recent Thundercats show (which DID get a toy line but sold horribly).
Unfortunately, I was part of the group who could not watch anything serial on afternoons after school, since, due to me living pretty far from my schools, I would return home pretty late and at a wide range of times. Whatever shows aired during the 5 PM to 8 PM slots were shows I could not watch every weekday, meaning I could only enjoy episodic shows where you can skip episodes and still understand what's going on. |
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GOTZFAUST
Posts: 35 |
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The amount of shows and especially the variety was extremely minuscule compared to other countries. The depth and variety of shows airing in Latin America, and mainland Europe is very much 6 or 7 times the size of everything aired during the US. That right there made Anime that much more mass market, as it kind of offered a different kind of feel than US shows. It made granddads remember the old days with Goldorak and Lupin III - that stuff does not happen in the US. Italy's broadcast of Dragon Ball Super reached almost 2 million viewers. That is almost Japan standards. This is all traced back to showing a dizzying amount of anime back then. I guess what I am saying you need a Toonami style breakout in the 70's and 80's to solidify anime culture. |
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belvadeer
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Which makes me wonder why some idiot couples became parents at all. It's like they go "Parental responsibility? What's that?" when they're told they have to be held accountable for their children's behavior. Letting them run around in public places and scream like dying chinchillas isn't proper parenting. Worse yet, these idiot parents get mad at other people who tell them to watch their damn kids, like others have no right telling them how to raise their children (which is hilarious because Mr. and Mrs. Moron Parent aren't really raising them at all by letting them constantly misbehave like that). This is how newer generations grow up so lazy and entitled, thinking they don't need or have to work, but should still get things for free.
Correct, as well as Disneyland itself to a worse extent. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6082 |
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They must've been on the same stuff most licensing companies in America were back before the anime bubble burst. |
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nobahn
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Reflecting on the TV shows that I watched in the late-'70s and mid-80's makes me feel so very old..... |
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