ADV, Funimation, and Geneon to form merger, discussion inside

There's an article about a forthcoming merger of sorts on animenewsnetwork ( http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/pressrelease.php?id=590 ) is the press release on it.

According to the release, this merger marks %70 of American anime being lumped into one. I don't think that all three companies are going to form one major company so much as work more towards ADV's Anime channel. The release sites that the focus of this is to market more anime for kids/young adults, so I think that this may mean a little more suffering on the end of dubs; however, ADV and Geneon still have pledged to adhere to the individual needs in faithful translations of their acquired properties. Should all things work out, we could have a high quality channel of anime available through all cable services, possibly even as Cartoon Network is wherein it would be available without having to be pay-per-view.

The drawback to this is that since ADV is definitely the spearhead of this, there could come pressure from them to push harder against fan subbing. There isn't anything they can do against series that haven't been licensed, obviously; my concern comes in the form of shows that are going to be epic and running for a long time, a la One Piece, Naruto, Bleach, and so on. ADV alone has shut down several sites, due to their viewpoint that fansubbing has lowered their sales. Funimation/Geneon do not openly support fansubbing, but won't crack down unless it is their DVDs that are being distributed on the internet.

Where we come in is that with a channel like this, we can make an outcry to have them run anime in Japanese. The community, as far as the individuals who have made their complaints and grievances with companies, have gotten a good bit done with the DVD releases themselves. Should companies begin licensing shows we enjoy in the midst of a series, I would feel better about it if they were to run the Japanese versions on their channel well before running the dubbed versions. Looking from a working standpoint, subbing an episode for them is minimal work. They receive the transcripts and have them translated fairly quick, afterwards all that remains is type-setting and allignment of text. Judging from fansubbers, they can do an episode in 2 days work, if worked hard. This can get their shows excellent exposure and take care of the fans who would rather watch subs over dubs. The question then comes, would you watch a TV channel that ran our shows subbed in lieu of downloading the episodes?

If we had such a channel over here I'd watch it dubbed or subbed. But we get only 1 hour of anime (that isn't childrens anime I mean) a day - at 5am on the Sci Fi channel - and thats dubbed.

Don't see anything wrong with this. I would be shocked for anybody to honestly be against this merger/project. Only problem I would have is if they walk the path of "Family TV", then it would be time to seriously injure some marketing execs.

I don't see anything wrong with an anime channel that is supported by all the US distributors and not pay-per-view either. I doubt that you will see suubed material on this channel, since it is meant to reach a broad population. They would lose income.