Forum - View topicNEWS: Editorial Director Gary Steinman Leaves ADV's PiQ Mag
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TornadoTatsumaki
Posts: 145 Location: Mission Bend,Texas |
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So your saying you want ADV to go under? Well sorry but it's not happening! Just because a few title get temporary pulled from the market along with a magazine change Which on January 22, Greg Ayers himself said was Kadokawa Shoten's decision, and just because Anime Network goes VOD exclusive doesn't mean ADV is in any trouble at all! Romel Lee the ADV screen director encoraged all Alamo attendees not to believe any rumors about ADV having a bad future saying that its untrue and that the company is just making some changes before the March fiscal which is when they said they will ship back all the titles it temporary removed. |
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Crawly
Posts: 204 |
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Where did I say that? Being pessimistic because ADV hasn't said anything to anyone about what's going on doesn't mean I want them to fail.
They pulled down more than just a few titles, and haven't given clear answers as to why or what's going on. That's a pretty major thing, especially at this point in time.
I said specifically that I thought these moves were good buisness decissions and never considered them to be signs of trouble. However, ADV having licensing issues is trouble no matter how you look at it. I hope they'll be resolved to everyone's statisfaction, but I don't think ADV is going to come out of it unscathed. We'll likely never get the details.
Geneon said the same things and kept going right up until the end, so you understand why I don't take much reassurance in that. It needs to come from Matt or DLW for me to believe it, and it needs to be followed by some concrete action. Not being familiar with high end business practices, I have to ask what the March fiscal has to do with them pulling titles and getting things back out to the public? Are the lenders/stockholders (Sojitz) waiting to see the numbers before giving them some kind of greenlight to get things back to the public? Or is it something else? Early rumors were that it was money/licensing issues with Sojitz, so is the March fiscal related to that? |
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AnimeCornerStore
Accredited Retailer
 Posts: 119 Location: Winchester, VA USA |
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I certainly hope what Romel said is true (we've heard much of the same from others down there), but what else could he say really? What can any of the folks at ADV say except that everything is going to be fine? For the past week we're being told by ADV management to keep ordering as normal and hope for good news to be coming shortly, and we are... ...but Gary bailing on PiQ is discouraging. Just 3 weeks ago he was 100% behind the new publication, and now he's leaving to head out for the Bay Area where there will be more opportunity for him than anything he's seeing right now in Houston. Executives that leave companies during a crisis and state it's for 'personal reasons' do so generally as a professional courtesy. As a long time ad partner with Newtype, we were somewhat disappointed with the direction they decided to take with PiQ, and I've made no secret of that in public. I'm sure it will be a fine publication in it's own right, but it won't be an 'Anime' magazine in the way Newtype was. After much consideration, we decided not to pickup our ad contract with PiQ right away. I decided we should see at least the first issue and listen to fan feedback before we decide if it's worth our support. (We will continue to support Protoculture Addicts, which has always been my favorite Anime publication going back several years.) On the other end, we really need to hear something official from ADV very soon. The blackout on title shipments and total lack of reliable information regarding future releases on such a major line is really beginning to hurt us out here at the retailer level. I don't know, maybe all this shakeup in the industry is starting to make me a bit cranky... 
Bob (aka Robert) The Anime Corner Store |
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MokonaModoki
 Posts: 437 Location: Austin, Texas |
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What Geneon said on Sept. 26 was that they would cease "the sales of DVDs and all related distribution and marketing operations as of 5 p.m. on Friday, September 28, 2007" and that only orders for catalog products in inventory or new releases with a street date of November 6 or earlier would be accepted." Which, of course, all came rolling down in very short time frame, and was actually nothing at all like any news coming out of ADV, who have merely said that they are working to overcome some temporary difficulties.
Well, at the most basic level, if there is a breakdown in the Sojitz/ARM deal, and if the money to continue projects was going to be coming from ADV's funds instead of from the joint venture funds, then it would make sense to isolate that restructuring by quarter. |
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Romeo Charlie
Posts: 8 |
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"Absolute bile." Mighty strong words for something you haven't seen yet. I mean, if that's your opinion once you've read through the entire issue, then so be it. On the other hand, I'd encourage you to give all the rest of the non-Tim and Eric stuff a chance. Who knows, maybe it'll end up being one step above heaven, just like your expectations.
This is true. What's not true is that Steinman won't have reach over any Tim and Eric coverage, despite being halfway across the country. He has very long arms. I mean, like LONG. Not short. |
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Hon'ya-chan
 Posts: 973 |
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I dunno, from what i'm gathering, PiQ is trying to cover to many bases for one magazine. Whether that is a good thing or not financially is one thing, but to me, it's skimping on one thing in order to do another.
Case in point: Wizard turned from a magazine mostly covering Comic Books and slowly de-evolved into a general entertainment magazine. What does Heroes have to do with Comics and why does it deserve a several page spread? And why bother when other mags might get that info faster and much earlier (which did seem to do sometimes, with Wizard being months behind on stories). Same is true with alot of Car magazines like Import Tuner and DUB's; they seem to try and be like Esquire, GQ or even Maxim in some cases. One page, your seeing some uber fast 3 trillion HP monster, the next, you have clothing reviews. Huh? What I think PiQ needs to do is focus in one general swath. General Nerdom isn't specific enough. Or general Pop Culture and the 18-34 demographic. It leaves it open for it to be broad and maybe overreaching. |
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Crawly
Posts: 204 |
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Don't remember the dates, but they also said that they'd licensed several new shows and had a distribution deal set up with ADV to keep things going. Their issues were temporary and they were working them out. Sounds pretty similar to what little ADV has said. ADV is having license issues right now. Basically put, they no longer have the rights to distribute any of those titles that were part of the Sojitz deal (and right before the pull told at least one anime club they no longer had the right to give them permission to screen one of their titles). If they can work it out, it's a temporary situation. If they can't, we'll be getting that "just in case" press release about them halting production that was leaked accidentally.
I understand the idea of restructuring by quarter. That makes sense. However, completely pulling every title you've licensed in the last 2 years and halting all distribution seems kinda drastic if all you're doing is restructuring your release plans. They've also been entirely too silent on the matter, which means they're probably negotiating something with their Japanese friends. Like I said, I expect them to pull something out of their hats, but I don't think this is a simple, temporary issue that will be solved by the magic of the March fiscal report. ADV is going to be feeling this for a long time down the road. |
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Hero of legend
Posts: 1 |
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Why are people saying ADV is dying?
They're great at dubbing Amine. Why can't 4Kids be the ones dying? They deserve to be. 
Who else is going to save Sonic once 4Kids loses the license? 
Am I misunderstanding anything? |
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MokonaModoki
Posts: 437 Location: Austin, Texas |
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Here's a timeline for reference. 2007-08-24 ICV2 reports that ADV is taking Over Geneon's sales, marketing, distribution effective October 1, 2007. 2007-08-29 Press release: ADV Films AND GENEON ANNOUNCE STRATEGIC ALLIANCE. 2007-09-11 Mitsubishi divests, leaving Geneon solely owned by Dentsu. 2007-09-11 Geneon USA lays Off sales, marketing staffers. 2007-09-21 Dentsu and ADV Films confirm Withdrawal of Geneon deal. 2007-09-26 Geneon to cease the sales of DVDs and all related distribution and marketing operations as of 5 p.m. on Friday, September 28." 2007-09-27 Dentsu announces that it will post a Y5 billion loss on Geneon's downsizing. So from the first bad news (breakdown of the ADV deal) to the really bad news (Geneon not continuing to sell anime to consumers) it took just 5 days (no disrespect to the laid-off Geneon staff is intended by my failure to acknowledge that event as bad news for the consumer).
What they said was:
and
So, far from saying that their issues were temporary and that they were working them out with any sort of timeline, Dentsu and Geneon were basically saying "Hasta la vista, US consumer!" In contrast, for ADV we have: 2008-01-09 Newtype USA to Cease Publication 2008-01-10 A.D. Vision to replace Newtype USA with PiQ in March 2008-01-18 ADV Suspends Anime ADVocates Club Program Indefinitely 2008-01-28 ADV Films Removes Titles from Website (but this had actually happened a couple weeks before this 'news' item broke)
My point was that Geneon said nothing like this. At all. Ever. The upshot of the ADV related items above was that suspension of club activities and dropping the license to publish a very expensive magazine occurred in the same timeframe that there was any hint of trouble with the ARM facilitated licenses (had anyone noticed when it happened). If the obvious belt-tightening is occurring in order for ADV to be liquid enough to renogiate rights to the ARM licenses, then good on them. But the indicators look nothing like what happened with Geneon. And according to Bob, ADV is telling retailers to keep ordering as normal. That is a HUGE difference from Geneon effectively saying "GAME OVER! Get all your orders placed by Friday!" There's a really big difference in ownership too. Dentsu owns 100% of Geneon. When Dentsu 'downsized' Geneon to the tune of a Y5 billion loss, they were pulling the plug on Geneon. But John Ledford still owns 78.4% of ADV, with the other 21.6% owned, since June, 2006, by the Japan Contents Investment Business Limited Partnership (basically Sojitz). If JCIBLP pulls out of ADV, then the problem becomes that ARM (JCIBLP subsidiary) owns the licenses in question, which are/were sub-licensed to ADV. If ADV has temporarily lost the sub-licenses to the anime in question, then yes, it becomes a relatively simple matter of renogiating the rights to those licenses. "Relatively simple" being in comparison to dropping out of the market completely, of course. I'm not saying that ADV doesn't have obstacles to overcome, since they obviously do. But in ADV's case, they have Japanese partners to negotiate with to resolve their issues. Negotiations which could be made much more complex, timely and expensive if those partners were made to look bad by the premature release of information about the situation. Expecting them to say more than they have is reasonable to want, but quite possibly unrealistic to hope to get. So, yeah, nothing like the Geneon situation at all. In fact, the only similarities between the two have been that both were involved in the deal that broke up in September, and both suspended operations of their 'clubs'. But Geneon dropped its club because it was going away, ADV dropped theirs to save money. Other than that, I don't see any similarities. |
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Keonyn
 Subscriber Posts: 5567 Location: Coon Rapids, MN |
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You know people, it might just be that the guy just wanted to move back to the bay area and that's all there is to it. While reading between the lines can sometimes reveal information, you have to remember that you're reading information from where no information is written. Sometimes there really is no information there to read and by looking to hard you just fuel the fires of the rumor mill and misinformation.
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Romeo Charlie
Posts: 8 |
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That's quite insightful. Sure, there's probably a ton of speculation is in there, but still, your fingers must be worn out. 
And tell me again, what does any of that have to do with PiQ or Steinman leaving? |
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rashrover
 Posts: 7 |
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Seems that Gary actually left PiQ to join the staff of PlayStation The Official Magazine.
From http://blog.jwhdavison.com/2008/02/biting-wit-of-four-year-old.html
Not to slight his tenure at NTUSA, or indeed anyone else's there, but the core editorial guys there always struck me as more video gamers at heart rather than anime-manga otaku... |
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rg4619
Posts: 163 |
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Wouldn't surprise me. I've never followed Newtype USA. However, I certainly know of Gary Steinman and Kevin Gifford from video game coverage. In particular, Gifford was a high-profile blogger and poster at Gaming-Age. Both quietly disappeared from the gaming scene a few years ago. IIRC, Gifford burned out on games (left a post saying that he lived and breathed games for years, but lost interest after covering them as a career), so he changed jobs. Last edited by rg4619 on Tue Feb 19, 2008 8:13 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Shadowrun20XX
 Posts: 1935 Location: Vegas |
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Videogames and Anime go hand in hand(I'm playing Haruhi no Tomadoi right now).Thanks for the info.I had thought OPM and PSM were gone.With the addition NTUSA disappearing I was kinda depressed.PtoM is the new title,I read.Thanks again. |
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rg4619
Posts: 163 |
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That's only a certain segment of the market - even in Japan, gaming is much more mainstream than the niche anime scene. You'd be surprised at the number of gamers who despise anime (particularly hardcore, old-school fans who feel that anime influences have watered down/cheapened games). |
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