Forum - View topicAnswerman - Is The Anime Glut And The American TV Glut The Same Thing?
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John Thacker
Posts: 1006 |
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Ehh, somewhat true, but mostly untrue. People like bundles, and proper bundles are consumer-friendly. After all, just look at how people flock to Netflix, or Crunchyroll, or any other service that allows access to hundreds of shows and movies that you don't watch, in order to watch the ones that you don't. Netflix is a bundle. Some of my Crunchyroll or Netflix subscription fees go towards buying rights for things I never want to see, maybe whole genres, time periods, or target audiences. People are not in any sense climbing over themselves in order to buy only the shows that they want a la carte from iTunes or Daisuki streaming Gundam: the Origin. Indeed, the home video market is collapsing in favor of streaming bundles. Buying shows on DVD and Blu-Ray (or downloads like iTunes) is definitely a la carte compared to these streaming bundles, and everyone keeps saying that its streaming bundles that are the future, not a la carte, which keeps declining whether on media or downloadable. It's true that everyone only watches 10 networks or so, but the amount that you pay for a network in a cable bill is proportional to the overall number of people who do watch it. It's just spread out over the total bill. I guarantee that while everyone only watches 10 networks, that list of 10 networks is different for everyone. What causes problems is a slightly more complicated and sophisticated problem. Bundles generally make sense when people have heterogeneous demand (if I value network X at $5 and Y at $2, and you vice versa, then a bundle of both at $6 brings in more revenue AND consumer surplus than if both networks are priced at $5). However, they cause problems if you can't structure the bundle so that different groups of consumers get the same total value from the bundle. The biggest problem seems to be live sports, and the rise of a significant number of people not interested in live sports. Live sports are growing in value relative to everything else in the bundle to people who watch them, and it makes it very difficult to construct a bundle that contains live sports yet will provide equal value to non sports watchers and sports watchers alike (especially since sports watchers do tend to still value the non sports networks.) That is what is making the current cable bundles fall apart; they are worth much more to some (primarily live sports fans) than to others. The two situations are definitely more similar than you let on. Many anime productions are not profitable, but are funded in the hopes of getting a hit. In both markets many are just barely hanging on, which is what you would expect; with excess profits and little barriers to entry, marginal entrants come into a market. |
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Arale Kurashiki
Posts: 751 |
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Sorry for having a shallow view of this, but when none of the series are interesting, who cares how much is being made?
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maximilianjenus
Posts: 2862 |
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that's when you realize that the world does not revolve around you and other people find something interesting.
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Randomfart
Posts: 44 |
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The otaku seem to disagree. |
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samuelp
Industry Insider
Posts: 2231 Location: San Antonio, USA |
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I think maybe a simpler reason for the larger amount of anime being produced the past few years is that anime are being created for a greater variety of source mediums than before.
Anime used to only be made for 2 things: to sell toys, or to sell manga (and in a limited amount, to sell visual novels) But lately it's also used to sell light novels, mobile games, actual novels, browser games, etc... Media companies of all sorts are realizing that making and producing an anime is ever more important in a crowded media landscape to get your product noticed. I bet if you look at the number of original anime or anime based on manga it's not increased all that much from 5-10 years ago, but once you add in all the shows based on other things (especially light novels), you get the increase you see. Justin is also totally right about the bubble in overseas streaming revenue, but I don't think that's been happening long enough to really account for the increase we've seen this year. It only really started to bubble about ~3 years ago... We should really start to see that affect starting over the next few seasons. |
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16935 |
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Between all the new tv series/seasons out there and anime shows every year it's impossible to keep up. At least if you work a normal 40hr a week job and have a life outside the tv it is. Each year I find myself further and further behind on shows and anime and I have been forced to cut many good shows out just to stay current on the handful of favorites. If you like to read, like I do, as well then you're doubly screwed lol.
Would be nice to have one of those nice pills like in American dad that make it so you don't have to sleep. |
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9841 Location: Virginia |
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200 new shows a year sounds unmanageable. However, as people keep pointing out anime is a medium not a genre. Unless you are new to anime or in the industry professionally there is no need to try to watch everything.
I find that now that we have streaming of much of this that I follow only three to five shows a season. So maybe twenty shows a year. That is sustainable. I actually buy more sets than that, but that includes sets broken into parts and older anime. I don't watch much non anime TV so I have no opinion on that. |
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mangamuscle
Posts: 2658 Location: Mexico |
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My personal opinion, it is not going to burst! 200+ new anime shows a year is here to stay. The reason is simple, as you surmised, money is pouring out of cable tv and into streaming. So by the time the cable bubble burst, producers will be begging Netflix, Hulu and the like to carry their shows. In the meantime CR, Funi, etc. will accumulate a userbase that will $tay in the years to come. If anything anime will take a note from hollywood and make their shows more palatable to foreign audiences. How? There is plenty to do: 1. lack translated lyrics/singalong songs. Adding translated songs will make people care for the opening/ending instead of skipping it. It can also improve sales of said songs on iTunes. 2. lack translated credits. Again, people might start caring who directs their favorite shows if they translate to english the credits in the opening/ending sequence. 3. lack translated hardcoded text. during the episode, it is common to see walls of text for a split second, it would be quite easy to trasnslate them for people to pause and read. 4. delayed simulcasting. If the original dubbing script was sent to translators as the same time the anime is being dubbed in japan, there would be more simultaneous streaming. 5. lack aggressive advertisement. Since their audience is now worldwide, maybe coca cola and similar would have paid a fortune in advertising in last season Hinouto, umaru-chan, to name one. 6. Late dubbing. One year or two is too much time for dubbing a series, if they know a show is going to be huge (i.e. AoT) they should invest in dubbing it asap. 7. Lack of liner notes. Many casuals will not understand some of the basics of the basics (like the fountain of blood thru the nose), but if people can pause and click on hyperlinks that will explain what is happening, people will return for more instead of running away. |
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Jonny Mendes
 Posts: 997 Location: Europe |
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Is the anime bubble going to end?
Is difficult to know. We can divide anime in 3 categories. Children and youg kids anime (Digimon, Pokemon, Sazae-san, Precure) are safe. Kids and parents love it and toys, games and tv-stations pay for them. Mainstream shounen shows based on famous mangas (One Peace, Naruto, Fairy Tail, Detective Conan, Attack on Titan) are still safe. TV stations pay for them because the manga are that big and famous. Now we have last category and maybe the one that have the most quantity, the late night anime. This are made for promoting Light Novels, Visual Novels, Games, figurines, less know mangas and BD/DVD. This animes are dependent of a small group of people, the Otaku. If otaku keep spending money in the products promoted by this animes, they will continue, but if they lost interest in this animes, the number of animes been made will been less the half. Don't forget that most of new animes each season are late night anime. So all of this late night animes are dependent of Otaku money. In Japan anime is not that big. Only the kid shows and the shounen shows bases on famous mangas are know to the general public. Most of them know next to nothing about the rest of the anime. |
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Eigengrau
 Posts: 104 Location: Belgium |
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200 new shows per year is a lot, but then the individual episode count per series rarely exceeds 12 or 13 any more (where there were perhaps 35 series per year at the most until the mid 90s, but many of them would clock in at about 40 to 50 episodes on average).
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Touma
 Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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This was yet another interesting and informative article.
Thank you, Justin. I do not watch TV, and have not had cable or satellite service for at least a decade, but I was still curious about how all of those shows and networks managed to survive. So the part of the article that was about US TV was actually more interesting to me than the part about anime. But both were well worth reading. There is something that I am still curious about with the anime. I cannot really grasp the implication of 200 shows per year, especially since not all shows are the same length. I think that I could understand it better if I knew how many episodes per week are being made. Last edited by Touma on Fri Oct 16, 2015 2:41 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Utsuro no Hako
Posts: 1034 |
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The anime bubble in Japan is different from what's going on in the US, but it does contribute to the American bubble just as much as Netflix and Amazon original series -- it's more content that's competing for eyeballs.
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4426 |
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It is interesting to hear such comments from the president of FX when several of that network's shows were moved over to FXX presumably to make people at least consider adding more channels to their cable package. I sort of lucked out that the town I live in now has FXX as part of its standard package so I can watch Archer after it moves, but I would have had to pay more to get FXX where I used to live, and it wouldn't be worth it when I only watch one show on that network.
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jirg1901
Posts: 150 |
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200 shows a year is only 50 shows a season much of which is pretty easily divided among demographic lines.
To put it one way the average 18-24 year old in America watches 2h20m of broadcast TV per day, if they were exclusively an anime viewer that would be 35 shows assuming none are shorts. |
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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And this, coming from FX's president, ladies and gentlemen! 
Think Justin came close to saying that the US TV bubble is a whole different kettle of fish, but dig deeper, and there's just a perfect storm of SO many reasons why US TV is dying: - With Time/Warner's problems, and other cable companies struggling, Comcast is now approaching a monopoly on cable, and they're enjoying all the pirate booty from it: Comcast's fees on hardware, digital bundles (I live in a valley where cable is required to get local channels, which means I would have to pay upwards of $99-$150/mo. to watch the free off-air network HDTV affiliates thirty miles away), and insistence on Internet/phone bundles to get them, would make even the Straw Hat crew cringe. If you'd ever wondered about "cutting the cord", Comcast's predatorily self-indulgent rates will be happy to convince you. - Online viewing and cable drama have symbiotically worked together to ruin each other: We now have a generation out of college that believes that EVERY show should be "binge-watched" three episodes, four episodes, or an entire season at a sitting, instead of one episode every Thursday night. The networks, both free and cable thus see a need to keep viewers "strung out" from week to week, and now nearly every drama series in the last six years has been in season-long serial-arc form...Which means little ever gets resolved at the end of an episode, there's always something more threatening around the corner, and almost nothing ends happily. That's probably why most cable drama, which turned "dark and gritty" because the commercial networks wouldn't let them, have almost no sense of humor, optimism or light-entertainment known to man, and the commercial networks try to follow suit and copy the dreary downbeat shows that are getting all the Emmys. (We occasionally have sitcoms, but because we have a generation that grew up on The Office and The Simpsons, we now have a comedy-impaired generation that believes Comedy is about the right to act like snarky immature responsibility-avoiding manchildren, and still have a job and family.) - Why are there nothing but reality shows and new miniseries on cable? Well, probably because every cable channel now has a parent corporation, and parent corporations don't want to show classic reruns or movies, when they can show new content that can be marketed on disk and streaming channels. They believe it's a waste of air space to show anything old that already has been released on disk ("Go watch it there!"), since they don't make their money directly off of it. But for some channels, cable dramas can be too expensive, with all those sets and union actors, especially when you can follow lumberjacks or garbagemen for a week, and convince them to start double-crossing each other for drama. As a result, we're all cutting the cords and getting our new reruns off of Hulu and Netflix--But as Landgraf said, when you have all those mutually jealous corporately-owned cable networks all falling into a copycat gray zone by trying to be each other, with AMC trying to be like Showtime, Showtime trying to be like HBO, FX trying to be like AMC, TNT trying to be like FX, Disney Channel trying to be like Nickelodeon, and all served up in one big bulk grab-bag of Halloween candy on the subscription servers, with unknown-quantity Exclusive series thrown into the mix, viewers don't really know what they're watching, or from where. The old "cult-identity" of 80's cable networks--when you knew what MTV would show and what Nick at Nite would show--vanished out of existence some time in the late 00's, when channel names all became strategically abstract alphabet acronyms that would let them show anything off-topic that they darn well pleased (after all, given the made-up names, you can't very well accuse "SyFy" of not being a "sci-fi channel", or "The H" of not being a history channel), and they all struggled to keep corporate brand names going. Oh, and making a few more bucks off of merchandising the Duck Dynasty guys. That has so little to do with the over-licensed "Pig in a poke" anime bubble of the 00's, it's starting to become an all-purpose buzzword that the new generation throws around without even understanding anymore. Those of old vets have to keep the history lessons fresh. |
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