Yu-Gi-Oh 5D's Coming to CN
During a recent presentation, 4Kids Entertainment announced that both Yu-Gi-Oh 5D's & Chaotic will be airing repeats (likely Monday-Friday airings) on Cartoon Network during this summer. It's good to see 5D's getting more exposure on American TV, though with only 26 episodes having been dubbed & aired on the CW4Kids, CN doesn't really have a whole lot of eps to work with. As for Chaotic, reruns of that already air on Disney XD. So it's a bit weird that it'll also be airing on CN. Or maybe it wont be on DXD anymore, don't know yet.
The main purpose of the presentation was to announce 4Kids' earnings for Q1 of 2009. They're still losing money, but this quarter saw the smallest loss for them in years. I guess that's a good thing? The main reason why they still haven't seen a profit is because they were really banking on Chaotic being the next big thing, but it has yet to really take off. Meanwhile the Yu-Gi-Oh card game has switched from Upper Deck to Konami, & Playmates has been named the new toy master for the franchise. 4Kids hopes these changes will result in better profits for the series.
One reason why their losses are so small this quarter is due to the fact that 4Kids is paying a lower amount in licensing revenues for Yu-Gi-Oh & Shaman King. They're now paying $0.9 million for Yu-Gi-Oh & $0.4 million. I'm happy to see that 4Kids is still willing to support the Shaman King anime, but you gotta wonder why exactly. The series hasn't aired on American TV in years, & it's not like they're still making DVDs, toys, video games, or cards for it anymore. All that's really left in the US is the manga, & Viz owns that. So why pay almost half a million dollars for a property you're just sitting on & not using? For the love of god, give us Shaman King DVDs!
Source: http://seekingalpha.com/article/136973-4-kids-entertainment-inc-q1-2009-earnings-call-transcript