Quote:
Originally Posted by Toua
Although this is standard practice for late-night anime TV show, it's not the studios that have to pay for TV slots in Japan, the ones that pay for it are production committees.
This is how the anime business works:
1.) A production committee is a gathering of different sponsors from the entertainment industry who finance a given production.
2.) They hire production houses such as animation studios, sound studios et cetera, and other contractors such as seiyuu. They pay these people a one time sum for their services, forget royalties and all that bullshit.
3.) Then they pay TV stations money for a given timeslot. If you think about it, it makes sense because TV stations basically sell air time. Production committees then decide how they want to make use of it. As they can't get third-party sponsors for their production because everyday Japanese hate otaku, they fill their time slot with ads for products of all sponsors included.
Obviously, a different business model applies for anime aired in prime time. Those rely on profits from third-party advertisers that look at ratings.
4.) Production committees then recoup costs from media mix sales (DVD, novel, comic etc), merchandise sales, and other licences.
The real tragedy is that production houses get paid very little. These companies don't have strong labor unions, they're not rich to stand up in court against productions committees that forget to pay them, bigger production houses have to outsource a lot of work overseas, and even then their employees make a bare minimum. So the cycle of exploitation continues.
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Thanks for clarifying on how the system works. Turns out that doing animation business to be hellishly more complex, with almost everything taking out of the gross until there's little left. Hence the common knowledge that some of them working in the industry -- be it lower-tier seiyuu or junior animators -- who work below the "line" have to moonlight as waiters, convenience store cashiers, etc.
I'd like to add the fact that IMO that local TV stations in my country buy broadcasting rights of a title from, say d-Rights or Sunrise, then they air it in dubbed form. This is one of the legal ways for me (although in a very long way) to support the efforts of the studio financially and to recoup their costs, despite the fact that localization is a hit-or-miss proposition (with fans these days so sensitive about the dubbing).
Going back to topic, @Vexx, either the spokespersons are telling the truth or they're seeking blame for their faults, taking advantage of the current economic downturn.