A Belated Geneon Post-mortem
Although not much of a "podcast" listener, which I think is due in one part to time pressures and in another part to occasional uncertainty over the way they're promoted, I made an exception for one instalment of Anime News Network's "ANNCast," which promised to feature someone from the late, lamented North American anime-releasing branch of Geneon, and especially after it was mentioned on a different message board. I suppose there were warning signs for those with eyes to see with a few other anime companies beforehand, but it might have most been Geneon's being shut down that plunged everyone into an uncertain new era; even I posted a bit about it at the time.
I had thought, given the particular slant of the anime message boards I did read, that Geneon had a strategy of picking titles that appealed to dedicated fans, and then concluded that just didn't work out in the end. From the podcast, though, it seems it was more a matter that some titles years back were unexpected successes, and all the North American anime companies, in trying to repeat that, started bidding licensing fees up until everything had to be a success, and when they weren't... Most of what happened in Geneon's final days, from licensing to release strategies, now seems to have been just a matter of scraping by hand to mouth.
Informative yet saddening in its own way, the podcast did leave me wondering if things are different these days for the remaining anime companies, if they don't have to spend quite as much on licensing and if they're better able to expect sales and set their strategies accordingly. Certainly, people complain that releases aren't as fancy as they used to be. Of course, lessons do fade with the passage of time...
I had thought, given the particular slant of the anime message boards I did read, that Geneon had a strategy of picking titles that appealed to dedicated fans, and then concluded that just didn't work out in the end. From the podcast, though, it seems it was more a matter that some titles years back were unexpected successes, and all the North American anime companies, in trying to repeat that, started bidding licensing fees up until everything had to be a success, and when they weren't... Most of what happened in Geneon's final days, from licensing to release strategies, now seems to have been just a matter of scraping by hand to mouth.
Informative yet saddening in its own way, the podcast did leave me wondering if things are different these days for the remaining anime companies, if they don't have to spend quite as much on licensing and if they're better able to expect sales and set their strategies accordingly. Certainly, people complain that releases aren't as fancy as they used to be. Of course, lessons do fade with the passage of time...