Ask John: How Profitable Would an Anime Channel Be?

Question:
Why aren’t there any anime channels in the US? You know, 24/7 anime non-stop, or at least 12 hours a day of anime programing. Is it because anime is not as popular in the US as it is in Japan or because studios can’t afford to buy anime series to broadcast? Would such a channel be able to make profits, or, more importantly, could such a channel exist, or would it be halted by certain laws (for example, in Canada, TV stations need a certain amount of Canadian content)?

Answer:
No one can predict the future, so I hope you’ll forgive me for being tentative about my response to this question. Rather than attempt to provide a conclusive answer, it may be more useful to simply provide a basis for discussion on the AnimeNation Forum. Certainly it may seem to serious anime fans that there’s more than enough market to support a television network devoted entirely to anime programming, but such may not actually be the case. Furthermore, there are definite feasibility considerations to account for such as the cost of television licensing, advertising and content acquisition.

Historically we may see that anime has not been as successful on American television as anime fans may assume. It’s true that numerous anime programs have made it onto American television, but consider also that if these programs were an unqualified success, there would be more anime on American television now than there is. Series long ago and more recently such as the broadcast of Teknoman, the original broadcast of Sailormoon, the original broadcast of Dragonball and the broadcast of Escaflowne were all canceled for poor ratings. The Sci-Fi Channel initially canceled, and has only recently rescheduled its limited broadcast of anime programming. And even the Cartoon Network, which actively supports anime, provides only a small fraction of its total weekly broadcast schedule to Japanese programming. One would assume that if anime was really such an overwhelming draw, the Cartoon Network would naturally want to reorganize its broadcast schedule to feature more of the programming the majority of its viewing audience wanted to watch. We can assume from this that while the popularity of anime on American television is steadily increasing, it’s not currently anywhere near big enough to support its own network.

A potential all-anime network would have to overcome difficulties not limited to finding a viewing audience, though. A broadcast or Cartoon Network-style basic cable channel would be essentially required, both by broadcast standards and marketing necessity, to air only edited or all-ages friendly anime, which limits the number of shows available. A premium cable channel would require a massive paying subscriber audience to merely support itself, much less make a profit. And even under optimum circumstances an all-anime television channel would require a massive library of titles to broadcast. Consider that there are 168 hours in a week and a single 26 episode anime TV series with no commercial breaks takes up only roughly 11 hours. Japanese licensors will also need to be paid for American television rights, as no copyright holder will agree to allow an American television network to broadcast and profit from an anime series without earning royalties or an up-front percentage of the profit.

At the present time, when there are television networks devoted to gardening and golf, it seems inconceivable that there isn’t a television network devoted to anime, but keep in mind that anime is, after all, foreign film, and there are very few television network in America that broadcast entirely foreign film, especially Japanese animated foreign film. Once again, while the anime market may seem massive to anime fans, and it’s true that the anime industry does have a lot of home video marketing influence and power in America, anime itself is still not nearly as understood or recognized an art form or entertainment medium in America as most anime fans think it is. It seems almost inevitable that America will eventually spawn an anime exclusive television network, but when experienced veterans like the Cartoon Network aren’t prepared to venture into extensive anime programming, we should probably take that as a sign that an all-anime TV channel is still quite distant for the American market.

Update: April 22, 2003
AD Vision has been instrumental in developing the The Anime Network, a digital cable, on-demand service presently available in two markets nationwide.