Quote:
Originally Posted by DonQuigleone
So I'm wondering, considering you guys know these statistics pretty well, how many Japanese people do you think watch Anime regularly (IE are Otaku) on TV
|
Ratings can give some insight into question, but their applicability is limited. First let's start with what a 1% rating means in Japan; that would work out to about 480,000 households. The data we get isn't national, though; it comes from larger markets like the Kantou region. Still let's assume for argument that a show that draws a one percent rating is watched in half-a-million homes.
However you're asking a different question, one that's measured by what marketers call "reach." That's the fraction of the audience that views at least one program of a given sort in a week or a month. We can't just add up the individual program ratings to get a reach figure, since many of the households being counted are likely to be watching multiple shows. Leaving out the Sazae-san's and concentrating on late-night shows, it's probably likely that the total audience for late-night anime is somewhere between five and fifteen percent of the total households, or some 2-8 million homes. The lower figure assumes a lot of overlap in viewing within the "otaku" audience; the higher figure would reflect a more diverse audience with many people watching only a couple of shows.
I've posted on ratings methodologies earlier in this thread.
Here's a good starting point.