History of Saban: Part 1

Introduction

Adapting Japanese media has taken many forms over the past 60 years, from rewriting stories and editing content to creating new music scores. While the practice has mostly fallen out of favor over the last two decades, these adaptations helped bring Japanese films, television series, and anime to non-native audiences worldwide. Numerous companies and people helped to create the foundations for the children who would become budding anime and tokusatsu fans worldwide throughout the end of the 20th century. There may have been none that were ever as far-reaching as Saban Entertainment.

Starting as a company that produced music for cartoons in the 1980s, Saban Entertainment would eventually move into producing its own shows and adapting anime by the middle of that decade. Founded by the eccentric Haim Saban, a self-made international business mogul, humble and self-deprecating about himself, but also someone who proudly drove a Rolls-Royce Corniche with the license plate “RSKTKR”. Friends considered him generous and charming but also fiercely competitive, unafraid to be ruthless and break friendships for a deal that benefited him personally. While living abroad in France and then Los Angeles for most of his life, his main loyalty has always been to his adopted homeland of Israel, where he grew up.

Saban Entertainment would strike gold when Mighty Morphin Power Rangers debuted on Fox Kids in 1993, becoming an overnight success story unseen in children's television at the time. By the end of 2001, Saban would sell his entertainment giant to the Disney corporation, leaving behind over 25 years of work in children's television while becoming a billionaire overnight. The legacy of Saban Entertainment is as fascinating and complicated as its larger-than-life founder, a media giant that helped shape and influence generations of children who would become budding anime and tokusatsu fans in America and other countries worldwide. Yet, it is also a legacy built from a career of cutthroat business deals and exploitation at the expense of numerous people along the way.

With the long-running Power Rangers franchise ending production in New Zealand at the end of 2023 under current owners Hasbro and a planned revival of the original series for Netflix seemingly stalled in development, the last vestiges of Saban Entertainment's once unstoppable media empire might be fading away. For many who grew up during the turn of the millennium, the nostalgia around shows Saban worked on remains fondly remembered and beloved. Let's take a look at the wild history of one of the most unlikely success stories in television at the end of the 20th century, built around cartoon music and anime imports.

Humble Beginnings or: Bluffing Your Way Into the Music Business

Haim Saban was born to an Egyptian-Jewish family in Alexandria, Egypt in 1944, his family eventually resettled to Israel in 1956 when Egypt expelled its Jewish and foreign-born population. Settling in Tel Aviv, the family of five would live in a small apartment, along with two other families near a bus station. The family, now living in poverty with Saban's father reduced to selling pencils and erasers door to door, young Haim would take on numerous jobs to help out. Eventually, he was sent off to an agricultural boarding school, a practice Saban claimed was done by families who couldn't afford to feed everyone. At school, Saban began a business of cleaning stables and barns, eventually gaining so many customers from the venture that he eventually worked as a contractor while having other people clean manure instead. Saban was expelled from school as a teenager and began attending a night school that he would eventually drop out of before enlisting in the military.

In his early 20s, Saban began his career in music by booking his first live gig, convincing the venue owner that his band would be far better if they paid him more than the current house band. Not having an actual band, nor knowing how to play an instrument, Saban quickly found a group in need of a bass player. Telling them he had a gig lined up, the group calling themselves The Lions of Juddah and would play at the venue with Saban's amp unplugged, the band teaching him to play over time. Saban would become proficient at playing and, for decades, would always travel with a guitar to play on as a hobby. The Lions of Juddah would eventually hire an English singer and attempt an unsuccessful attempt to break into the UK market. Saban would leave the band before this, becoming a concert promoter throughout Israel instead. He continued doing so until financial issues caused by the 1973 Yom Kippur War wrecked business for him and Israel, and he decided to move to Europe with hopes of further success in music there.

Relocating to France, Saban became a music promoter and record producer with his own label, Saban Records, eventually forming a partnership with fellow Israeli musician Shuki Levy. Levy, at the time, was a duet singer with his partner, Aviva Paz, their song “Signorina Concertina'' being a hit across Europe in 1973. While Levy enjoyed singing, his real passion was composing, and when Saban contacted him to join his music production team, Levy accepted on a handshake agreement. With Levy writing the music and Saban handling the business deals, their career in composing music together began.

Saban also brought over Noam Kaniel, a child singer Saban had discovered on the streets of Tel Aviv in 1970, and helped promote him as a singer. Kaniel would have numerous hits in France as a popular child singer, scoring his biggest hit in 1978 at 16. Kaniel and Saban Records would record the original French opening song for Goldorak, adapted from UFO Grendizer. Not only would the Goldorak series become wildly popular on TV in France, but the theme song would go on to sell over 3.5 million copies as well. Saban, noticing the song's success attributed to him and Levy, believed there was a place to make money with music for animated shows and set out to begin his career in television music production.

Saban Productions: A Schlepper of Music and Cartoons

Beginning in 1980, Haim would create Saban Productions and contact fledgling French animation studio DIC Audiovisuel, founded by Jean Chalopin, making an unheard-of offer. Saban would produce music for DIC's shows for free, but Saban would retain the publishing rights to the music. Saban's deal would see his company and himself profiting every time a licensing deal for any show they scored was done worldwide. Due to music copyrights in most countries being separate from the series itself, anytime a series was acquired for broadcast, a separate music license was also required. The annual fees for music licenses would be collected and paid out through performing-rights organizations like BMI and ASCAP, letting Saban collect numerous royalties.

The first work Saban and Levy provided to DIC was the Tokyo Movie Shinsha co-production Ulysses 31, a sci-fi spin on Homer's Odyssey released in the fall of 1981. Followed by the Studio Pierrot co-production The Mysterious Cities of Gold, a fantastical adventure set in South America in the 16th century. The series would air in Japan first in 1982 with its own music score handled by composer Nobuyoshi Koshibe and in France the following year with heavy synthesizer and world music score by Saban and Levy. The first music from the duo that would reach audiences in America would be for DIC's biggest hit, Inspector Gadget in 1983. That same year, the duo would provide the music for Filmation's popular He-Man and the Masters of the Universe as well as the spin-off series She-Ra: Princess of Power.

Saban would continue producing music for numerous cartoons, referring to himself as a “schlepper of cartoons and cartoon music,” being credited for music on over 70 different series by the end of the 1980s. Most of these works would be cartoons, mostly made by DIC, including The Real Ghostbusters, Rainbow Brite, Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, and more. While the music would always be credited to Saban and Levy, most of the music was composed by Levy along with other composers hired by Saban, including Noam Kaniel. They signed contracts that waived their rights to collect royalties and were paid a salary, while Saban and Levy reaped most of the money made from the numerous compositions instead. One of the few songs that Haim Saban himself has claimed he had a direct hand in making was the theme song to DIC's 1984 animated series Heathcliff and the Catillac Cats.

Saban Begins Producing Their Own Shows

Beginning in 1984, Saban would begin going into producing television shows with the short-lived live-action/animated hybrid series Kidd Video, with animation handled by DIC. Running on NBC, the show focused on the titular Kidd Video band being transported to an animated world and would feature popular music hits and include music videos featuring the Kidd Video band, performing original songs produced by Shuki Levy.

Saban's first foray into adapting Japanese anime would come in 1985 when they released Macron 1, a series adapting together the unrelated giant robot shows Go-Shogun and Srungle. Saban's approach to Macron 1 would see two unrelated shows mixed in a confusing plot requiring a long narration following the show's catchy theme song. Where shows like Voltron and Robotech took unrelated shows and had each series follow one after another; mostly to hit the necessary episode count needed for syndication; rarely had such a drastic mashup of two different shows intertwined together been attempted. Macron 1 also continued Kidd Video's “MTV-esque” trend of featuring pop music hits in the show, with action scenes set to in-house covers of songs like “Beat It,” “Everybody Wants to Rule the World',' “Sussudio,” and more. When Macron 1 was distributed in Europe, only the Go-Shogun footage would be used, creating a more straightforward show.

It was also around this time that Saban first attempted to adapt Toei's Super Sentai franchise with Choudenshi BIOMAN, having seen the show on a Tokyo hotel TV during a business trip. Saban would have Shuki Levy write and direct a pilot for the series, replacing the Japanese actors with new footage of original characters and dubbing over the existing action scenes. Saban shopped the pilot around to various television networks, where it was rejected as looking “too cheap” and being “overly violent to air for children.” With no network interested in picking up the series for production, Saban shelved the project for the time and continued with music and television production.

In 1986, Saban pulled a cutthroat business move with long-time partner DIC, now helmed by former Hanna-Barbera writer Andy Heyward, who was in charge of DIC's American offices. Heyward, who helped give DIC its reputation in the animation industry of “Do It Cheaply”, had launched a takeover to buy out founder Jean Chalopin from the company. Loaded with debt from the buyout, Heyward was looking to sell company assets, and Saban offered to buy the foreign distribution rights to DIC's now extensive library. After the purchase, Saban told Heyward that he had an investment group that was going to buy the programming library from him, but he didn't disclose that said group included Chalopin, whom Heyward considered a personal enemy. Saban sold the library to Chalopin's group for nearly double the price he paid Heyward for them initially. Soon after Heyward and DIC would sue Saban Productions, eventually settling in 1991, the two former business partners wouldn't speak to each other personally for another decade.

Saban Productions changed its name to Saban Entertainment in 1988 and continued making music while producing more anime adaptations and a variety of television series. It was also around this time that Saban had one of his lawyers set up a company for Saban in the Netherlands Antilles, long used as a tax haven for the wealthy, to handle foreign distribution of Saban's programming. This resulted in Saban not having to pay any taxes related to the profits made outside of the United States, and it has been estimated this saved Saban over $100 million over the next 15 years.

Nickelodeon would also start airing various children's anime series brought over by Saban throughout the late 1980s, beginning with Maple Town, Toei and Bandai's rival toy line to the Sylvanian Friends collectible figures. Other series that would air on Nickelodeon would include Nippon Animation's Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics anthology series, initially shown during Nickelodeon Special Delivery block. Another Nippon Animation series adapted by Saban that aired on Nickelodeon was Noozles, a series about the adventures of two magical koalas and their human friend Sandy, voiced by Haim Saban's step-daughter Heidi Lenhart. These series would eventually become a part of the fledgling Nick Jr. block aimed at younger children, which would later include the early 1970s Nippon Animation series Maya the Honey Bee and Tatsunoko Production's The Littl' Bits. Most of these series would remain as regular staples of Nick Jr. well into the middle of the 1990s.

Other anime series for kids would also end up on HBO, including two series from Nippon Animation's World Masterpiece Theater series, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Tales of Little Women. HBO would also air Saban's English adaptation of Tatsunoko Productions 1972 series Mock of the Oak Tree, which they would bring over as The Adventures of Pinocchio. Saban Entertainment would experiment with producing game shows, cartoons based on existing properties, and television films as they moved into the 1990s.

Saban Entertainment would finish the 1980s with numerous animated shows based on existing live-action works, including ALF, The Karate Kid, Kid 'n Play, as well as the John Candy-helmed series Camp Candy. The company would also begin producing TV movies and documentaries, which included a JFK conspiracy documentary and an Emmy-winning miniseries based on The Phantom of the Opera. Saban would also produce game shows, including I'm Telling!, Treasure Mall, and Couch Potatoes; as well as a variety show aimed at teenagers called 2Hip4TV hosted by a young Colin Quinn and Ahmet Zappa and featuring music guests including the Red Hot Chili Peppers. They would also continue providing music for video game-based cartoons with DIC's The Super Mario Brothers: Super Show and Captain N: The Game Master while also producing the video game-themed series turned game show Video Power as well.

While most of these works would be in syndication or on networks like NBC, Saban's relationship with the upstart Fox Network and their new kids' block, Fox Kids, would usher in Saban's biggest success.

Read on next week to learn more about Saban's rise in 1990s children's television!