SyFy Abruptly Ending Anime Block on June 9th

[Leroy]

Read it here what a bummer one of the last things SyFy seemed to be doing right, airing anime that Cartoon Network or other channels wouldn't touch like Gurren Lagann, Gundam 00, Star Blazers etc. I was hoping they would expand the block and air Zeta and the 00 movie along with more Leiji Matsumoto stuff. Seriously what does SyFy even have anymore? The channel seems to have canned everything else.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Syfy has a policy against anything good or cool. Didn't you get the memo? For years they've done everything short of tattooing WE SUCK BIG HAIRY WOOKIE BALLS on their forehead. Someday, we'll all stop expecting anything from them, ever, at all.

 

[SG-17]

I didn't even know that there was an anime block.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

There wasn't enough futanari in there to make the whole thing bearable, anyway.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I think this is one occasion in which SyFy can't be blamed for. Anime on U.S. television just doesn't pull in a large enough audience. I would wager that most of the potential viewership either already owns a show, watches it online and through other means, or wouldn't watch it on TV simply because it's dubbed or edited for broadcast. IMO, SyFy was throwing bad money after bad, something that Fuse and IFC learned earlier when they dropped their anime blocks.

Even the anime block on Adult Swim pulls in meager ratings compared to its comedies.

 

[jefferiestubes8]

SyFy was throwing bad money after bad, something that Fuse and IFC learned earlier when they dropped their anime blocks.

I think though with the SyFy owned by NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast (51%) and General Electric (49%) it had already moved on to unscripted programming for 2011
SyFy 2011 non-scripted shows announced

and talk of it back in 2009
SyFy considering doing Cooking and Talk Shows...

pushing out a anime block means less licensing fees and more original unscripted programming time...
I can't say I'm surprised.

 

[cylkoth]

I think this is one occasion in which SyFy can't be blamed for. Anime on U.S. television just doesn't pull in a large enough audience. I would wager that most of the potential viewership either already owns a show, watches it online and through other means, or wouldn't watch it on TV simply because it's dubbed or edited for broadcast. IMO, SyFy was throwing bad money after bad, something that Fuse and IFC learned earlier when they dropped their anime blocks.

Even the anime block on Adult Swim pulls in meager ratings compared to its comedies.

The block was doing well on Monday nights...the problem came this past January, with Being Human (US) debuting. They needed the late time slot for the BH encore, so they moved Anime briefly to Tuesday, before their Tuesday reality shows premiered, also pushing it off for late night encores of the primetime junk. Wed primetime also had reality crap, so it couldn't air late nights there, leaving Thursday as the only available night. Not helping, was Syfy's decision to air 5 episodes of Sarah Connor Chronicles, pushing the block back further than ever. Even after the collapse of TSCC, they still won't move it back up to 11pmEST, TNG fills those 2 hours.

So, IMO, there is some blame for the network in once again, wrecking something that was actually working for nearly 2 years...

Sigh, I hate cutting them slack, but Star Blazers is pretty darn old, and I was concerned when I first heard it would be added to the block. Perhaps it's dragged down the ratings, but again, the timeslot changes make it difficult to judge. If the block remained on Monday, and Blazers failed, a replacement could've made the difference. Now, we'll never know, and anime takes the blame rather than the scheduling.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I think this is one occasion in which SyFy can't be blamed for. Anime on U.S. television just doesn't pull in a large enough audience. I would wager that most of the potential viewership either already owns a show, watches it online and through other means, or wouldn't watch it on TV simply because it's dubbed or edited for broadcast. IMO, SyFy was throwing bad money after bad, something that Fuse and IFC learned earlier when they dropped their anime blocks.

Even the anime block on Adult Swim pulls in meager ratings compared to its comedies.

The block was doing well on Monday nights...

But not well enough to stay there in any capacity, and Monday is generally their weakest night. They found something else that brought them higher ratings than the anime did.

...the problem came this past January, with Being Human (US) debuting. They needed the late time slot for the BH encore, so they moved Anime briefly to Tuesday, before their Tuesday reality shows premiered, also pushing it off for late night encores of the primetime junk. Wed primetime also had reality crap, so it couldn't air late nights there, leaving Thursday as the only available night. Not helping, was Syfy's decision to air 5 episodes of Sarah Connor Chronicles, pushing the block back further than ever. Even after the collapse of TSCC, they still won't move it back up to 11pmEST, TNG fills those 2 hours.

So, IMO, there is some blame for the network in once again, wrecking something that was actually working for nearly 2 years...

The only thing SyFy can be blamed for is switching out anime for stuff that gets them higher ratings.

 

[Christopher]

Darn, I guess I'll have to get the rest of Star Blazers from Netflix, assuming they have it.

 

[bullethead]

I wonder if this was due in part to licensing issues, because I've heard that the terms for those can be pretty restrictive. I do know that whenever I would happen to catch an Ani-Monday commercial, it was always for the block, never for the shows. Hell, the only reason I even knew the Gundam 00 dub was coming to SyFy was because I saw a thread on 4chan's /m/ board, which is about mecha anime.

That said, if they had gotten something like Outlaw Star or Big O and used that to promote the hell out of the block, they might have gotten some more viewers.

 

[Tyson]

Anime is objectively terrible and fans of anime should be sterilized.

 

[cylkoth]

I think this is one occasion in which SyFy can't be blamed for. Anime on U.S. television just doesn't pull in a large enough audience. I would wager that most of the potential viewership either already owns a show, watches it online and through other means, or wouldn't watch it on TV simply because it's dubbed or edited for broadcast. IMO, SyFy was throwing bad money after bad, something that Fuse and IFC learned earlier when they dropped their anime blocks.

Even the anime block on Adult Swim pulls in meager ratings compared to its comedies.

The block was doing well on Monday nights...

But not well enough to stay there in any capacity, and Monday is generally their weakest night. They found something else that brought them higher ratings than the anime did.

...the problem came this past January, with Being Human (US) debuting. They needed the late time slot for the BH encore, so they moved Anime briefly to Tuesday, before their Tuesday reality shows premiered, also pushing it off for late night encores of the primetime junk. Wed primetime also had reality crap, so it couldn't air late nights there, leaving Thursday as the only available night. Not helping, was Syfy's decision to air 5 episodes of Sarah Connor Chronicles, pushing the block back further than ever. Even after the collapse of TSCC, they still won't move it back up to 11pmEST, TNG fills those 2 hours.

So, IMO, there is some blame for the network in once again, wrecking something that was actually working for nearly 2 years...

The only thing SyFy can be blamed for is switching out anime for stuff that gets them higher ratings.

I can't offer concrete rebuttals to your sentiments. There's been no ratings information posted for the 11pm EST time periods, since Syfy began using those slots to encore their newly established Mon and Tue night 2 hr blocks.
I can only repeat that the reason behind moving anime off Mondays was due to their introduction of first run material for primetime Mondays, and they perhaps didn't think amine would be compatible to follow it.

I simply lament that anime will be blamed for the block going bye-bye, and not the poor handling.

 

[Hound of UIster]

Read it here what a bummer one of the last things SyFy seemed to be doing right, airing anime that Cartoon Network or other channels wouldn't touch like Gurren Lagann, Gundam 00, Star Blazers etc. I was hoping they would expand the block and air Zeta and the 00 movie along with more Leiji Matsumoto stuff. Seriously what does SyFy even have anymore? The channel seems to have canned everything else.

The 00 movie was panned by nearly everyone. Really the entire series shows that it becomes a mess when you try to do three different things at once. It's also a reminder to whoever wrote the thing that you really shouldn't try to insert humanistic themes into a television series thats a toy commerical for giant death machines. It just comes out as hollow.

 

[od0_ital]

Anime is objectively terrible and fans of anime should be sterilized.

like anime fans ever have sex!!! geez...

 

[DeepSpaceWine]

Anime is objectively terrible and fans of anime should be sterilized.

So... you are advocating eugenics against the entire Japanese race? Objectively? You some kind of Prophet or Wormhole Alien? A First One? A big angry blue head trapped in the center of the galaxy?

 

[Saga]

Anime is objectively terrible and fans of anime should be sterilized.

like anime fans ever have sex!!! geez...

 

[bullethead]

Anime is objectively terrible and fans of anime should be sterilized.

Steins;Gate would like to have word with you.