Forum - View topicPR: Crunchyroll, TV TOKYO, Shueisha and Pierrot Announce Addition of Bleach Simulcast to Crunchyroll
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Twilightmaster
 Posts: 129 |
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Only took them a year or so after Naruto, but hooray for Bleach fans!
Personally I can't stand shounen as anime, so I could have cared less if they simulcast this or not. (poor anime budgets due to the length of the series and can anyone say 'fillers galore'?) But far be it from me to chastise any simulcasts in general, as each helps to keep the anime industry in america pushing that much longer. |
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cool_inuyasha_girl
Posts: 7 |
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Having two of the most popular anime series is either going to make or break them. Like it or not, Bleach is an incredibly popular series and the dattebayo fanbase seems to be quite broken up about this. Not to mention the one week waiting period and the fact that Crunchyroll doesn't keep always keep the cursing, attack names and some Japanese terminology accurate. I support what they are doing and I don't know how Naruto has been since Crunchyroll acquired it, I'm just going by whats being said on the various Bleach forums, but I hope this proves to do more good than harm on fansubbing in general. The issue is if crunchyroll doesn't sub to fansubbers standards, other fansub groups will once again take into their own hands due to Bleach's popularity. I hope it works out for everyone though, good job Crunchyroll:D
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egoist
 Posts: 7762 |
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Then how about we start combating One Piece piracy worldwide by letting CR stream it? We all know it's easily reachable online, and we all know very few of us are willing to keep up with the slow DVD releases (heck, it's not even released here to begin with) and the massive amount it's going to cost to collect all DVDs, whose only buyers will be collectors who really enjoyed OP, in case it's ever released over here. It's hard to believe that after dumping so much money on CR they're still reluctant about offering all their content (anime, specifically). |
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agila61
 Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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That is, VizMedia ... CR doesn't do any subtitling, the subtitling it uploaded with the AV by the producer. CR has been trying to get the rights to offer alternative subtitles since they went legit, but with no luck so far. Another fansub group will emerge, just like a fansub group replaced DB on Naruto, but that has very little to do with the success of the new stream. Just like Naruto, this will generate continued growth for viewership and traffic at CR's site, which will make CR more attractive for various companies to try special promotional deals and tie-ins with. Having two of the big three will make it easier to get more new simulcasts to agree to a streaming deal. In the end, the success of CR depends on building the size of its market audience ... the size of the non-market audience for ripped-off downloads and leech streams is entirely beside the point. |
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captainbanana
Posts: 191 |
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Well, I guess that means DB is done subbing it if they stick to their word. I'd have been thrilled...except for the whole "in SD for free one week later" portion of the announcement (if I'm reading that correctly). Needless to say, most fans aren't going to wait a week, and some other group will spring up to take DB's place.
Is the reason for the week delay a simple matter of money? Are advertisements not enough with a show like Bleach to make money? |
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Revolutionary
 Posts: 607 Location: New England |
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One Piece is a completely different matter. It airs on a different channel (Fuji TV) and is done by a completely different animating company (Toei Animation). Plus in the US it has a Simulcast going on by FUNimation. It's all too likely that in order for CR to get One Piece they'd have to go through FUNimation and use FUNimation's subs. Hard to say what FUNimation would think of that idea. However there was a strange hint (although it's likely an error) on the VIZ site:
Still not sure what to make of that. |
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egoist
Posts: 7762 |
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Now, that slipped my mind. Shame on me for making this mistake even though I read every Japan's animation TV ranking and have seen every One Piece episode with Fuji's symbol right on the top. |
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agila61
Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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It is, optimistically, a whole two or three cents in advertising revenue for ad-streams ... in some countries less, of course. Say it averages 2 cents and 1 cent goes to royalties. DB says they get around 300,000 downloads ... that would be $3,000. And that would not be net, first the subtitling has to be paid for. If the average (not heaviest user, but average) user was following three series and doing a one season back catalog per month, that would be 25 views per month, at around $6 per month is $0.24 per view. Comfortably 10 times the revenue per view by subscribing members. |
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captainbanana
Posts: 191 |
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What I fail to understand I guess is why TV Tokyo, Shueisha and Studio Pierrot would care about CR's profits at all. Do they get a share of the profits from premium subscribers (if there are any profits I should say)? Why wouldn't they cut out the middleman, sub the shows themselves, and collect the entire two or three cents, while being able to tout ad-supported, day-of subtitles? Day-of premium subtitles and week late ad-supported subtitles aren't exactly the best sales pitch against fansubs (free and day-of). If that is really how much they make, it is hard to see how CR could be profitable, since it must use a ton of bandwidth every month, and a few cents wouldn't seem to cover that. Even when you count in subscriber revenue, it's hard to see how they'd be profitable. |
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Mr. sickVisionz
 Posts: 2175 |
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1. If the people who license it can't profit from it they probably won't be licensing other stuff in the future, reducing the money you'll get from them. 2. Probably so. 3. Japanese companies tend to be very risk averse. It's totally safe to just sell off a license to someone rather than ever make any attempt to go into a new market yourself, even if that market is totally aware of your product and has been so for like 20+ years and has video games, DVDs, clothing items, tv broadcasts, theatrical runs, Blu-rays, dozens of fan conventions where actors and singers from your products show up and meet hundreds and thousands of people, and comics based off of your products. After like 20+ years of anime being sold in the US there's been almost no change in the relationship between licensee and creator/owner and they are still at the most basic level of licensing. |
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captainbanana
Posts: 191 |
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They'd better learn the ability to adapt to new technology and new market realities soon or they may not have to worry about CR generating any revenue for them in the future. |
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agila61
Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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Other than CR hitting breakeven and continuing to function, they likely don't. What they would care about is the revenue that CR is getting, since they are getting a share of it.
Unlikely that they would gamble on whether and when CR hits profitability. A pure royalty deal gives guaranteed income per view, independent of whether CR makes or loses money in the process. A royalty deal with up front license fee is even better as guaranteed income. Its likely that CR pays a higher royalty on simulcast streams than on followcast streams, and the premium membership is how they can afford to do that. Also, its likely that CR either funds or finances the cost of the subtitle, and the premium membership is also how they can afford to do that. And any up-front license fees that are agreed to ... would be paid for out of the premium membership.
Less money up front, because they would have to build toward the site traffic that CR already had when they jumped the fence to become legit, greater risk, since they would have to finance the costs of the operation. They have to get set up to region block and take payments from over a dozen primary national markets and lots of second markets. Over half of CR's revenues go to the content partners in Tokyo, without the content partners in Tokyo having to worry about anything but not messing up the upload. And there's also status risk. If Crunchyroll is a failure, its only TokyoTV with egg on their face. If its a Japanese JV like Hulu, all the JV partners risk getting egg on their face.
Fansubs are the market destroyers, its leech streaming sites. And if you are only having to do a daily sweep of the most recent week of leech streaming uploads and are doing a weekly sweep of their back catalog, its easy to make "copyright infringement" more common than actual content in the week after the simulcast.
One episode at 360p is under $0.01 per view. The reason the leech streaming sites have to rely on uploads to free video streaming sites is that they are getting low grade banner and click through advertising that will be yielding under $0.001 per view.
If the 20m views in February are extended across a year, that's 240m views annually, which seems like it ought to be getting close to break even. If they could hit 1b views annually, with 5% from members, it would seem like they might be generating profits to reinvest into further growth. If you were doing, as Funimation is, purely to try to defend your revenue base, yes, you'd simulcast straight to ad-streams to get the maximum viewers to best drain viewers from leech streaming sites, and focus on digital downloads for your digital distribution profits. CR is, OTOH, trying to make the streaming a self-sustaining growing revenue base rather than as purely defensive ploy. The way that the questions whether one or the other or both strategies will prove effective is the old empirical test ... try it and see. |
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