Well, not to infringe on the trademark or pending trademark of Hulu.com. What I mean, is a site or service like Joost that has subtitled anime and not just dubbed. Well, I like dubbed anime, don’t get me wrong, but I’m fine with subtitled anime as well. Not everyone is, but there are at least enough people willing to spend hours recording, encoding, and adding subtitles to some of the best anime out there, it holds to reason that all of those people downloading the torrents now would rather watch the subtitled anime legally.
Limitations
There are limitations to this idea, which will probably limit how many shows would be available on this fictional service or web site. It is a dream, but not one that is currently viable in the real world markets. Or at least that is my opinion. It is quite possible that you could crowd-source a lot of it and cut down on the costs considerably.
- License fees.
As with any show, if you want to distribute it, you need the rights to do so. Legally, all of the anime subtitled torrents are illegal and those who download and distribute the shows are breaking the law, unless they brought the rights to do so. I don’t think it is cheap to buy the rights, which is reasoning behind some anime shows not reaching the US, just not cost effective to both buy the rights and hire voice actors to dub over the dialogue.
For every show, let’s wager that it costs 30K USD, so if you wanted to license Basquash!, Chrome Shelled Regios, Naruto, Bleach, Asura Cryin’, 07 Ghost, BECK, Casshern SINS, and Chaos HEAD. It will cost 270K USD just to have the rights to distribute the shows. This is just an example, it may cost less and it may cost more, even a whole lot more. After you get the license you move on to the next expense.
- Paying for the subtitles.
Granted, not everyone is overjoyed with reading and there are probably a lot who aren’t going to be impressed with having to read the dialogue. Well, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon did well in the movies (dub was horrible). Of the 4000 to 10000 who will be interested in such a site, the subtitles will need to be done on the cheap or the license will need to be brought on the cheap.
One idea is to crowd source the subtitles. Have a group of people watch the raws and time the subtitles. There are already people doing that and if you hand some of the ad revenue that is left over, more who have the ability might be willing to continue. A huge “If” however, you could always hire one or two people on part-time basis to subtitle the shows and hire another to time them. In the beginning, you’re probably not going to get a lot anyway.
My guess is that at the worse, you are looking at hiring a translator at $30K to $60K.
- Bandwidth.
Bandwidth and the player is going to get crazy. I want something as bad ass as Hulu, with all of the features it has. This venture would require a vast amount of servers and bandwidth on the scale of, well just take all of the bandwidth torrents save and apply that to the HD quality of the shows. If you have a show that is 700MB and 7000 people watching it, you used 4900 GBs of bandwidth. That is a serious ouch! Seriously, I think the encoding process of most sites seriously lower the size of the shows.
- Advertisers.
The best option would probably be DVD and toy manufactures. Probably also want to throw in man products as well, razors, textbooks, etc. I will say that the money from advertisers will probably have to be around $5000 a month. If you get 30 of them, then you will at least pay for the licenses and perhaps the dedicated subtitle employee. Whether or not advertisers will be interested, is another problem.
- Delay from airing in Japan and on the site.
It is unlikely that the schedule will be like that of any fansubber. If you think a week or two is bad, then it won’t even get close to the time it will take before the show can broadcast the series on the site. Granted, the TV studios are going to be concern with citizens of Japan and China accessing the site and taking revenue from the studios. I would solve that by geo-blocking the IPs of those in Japan. It will stop most probably, and better technology can probably be brought that will block those who are using proxies.
It would be great, if that could be used to get the people licensing the anime and the TV studios to allow for shorter periods of time before having the show available. My hope is that it will just less than a week after the broadcast in Japan, depending on how long it takes to subtitle the show. Hell, if at all possible, it might be possible to get the shows beforehand, subtitle them, and then have them up a day after the broadcast in Japan.
If the delay is too long, then it isn’t going to stop those who wish to get it sooner from doing what they are doing currently. With the license, it will probably cut off some fansubbers who might have otherwise done subtitles and those sites who respect licenses. Not all do and with the popular shows, you can bet that some fansubbers will continue doing so.
The Plus Side
- Already have subtitled and dubbed anime.
There is already a large collection of existing anime out there that is both subtitled and dubbed as well. It should be cheaper to buy the rights to distribute those on the site to help supplement buying new rights to current anime already out there. It is completely possible to get distributors to sign on the idea, based on the assumption that if the viewers like what they see at least a percentage of them are going to want to buy the DVDs for home viewing for better quality and extra features.
- Affiliate with anime distributor.
Pimp out the DVDs, if they exist and get as many people to buy them as possible. It won’t be any where near paying the full expense of such a site or service, but it should at least help here and there with the payments.
- Might be more popular than what I think.
I don’t really like spending a lot of money and I’m naturally a pessimist. I believe that those who might be willing to buy DVDs and those who are wondering if it is worth buying the DVDs might appreciate watching the anime shows on their monitors, “Dude, that anime series is kick ass, I need to have it!”
Why I Like the Idea
The problem I have is that not every anime series in Japan is going to make it to the US and the ones that do, it will take a lot of money to buy them all. Of course, what I should say is not all of them are going to make it to the TV. So for those of else who don’t want to spend a tiny fortune buying up all of the awesome series, well it will cost $100 per series, so the above will cost at least $900, and that probably only includes the first 3 seasons of Naruto and Bleach.
I think it is a better model to allow advertisers to foot the bill in exchange for catching the eye of viewers. So for those who don’t have the money, seeing an advertisement for a razor that looks impressive might be better investment for that person than paying $90 for the DVD pack of 07 Ghost, when it comes out.
Also, it works for most people, since those who are interested will get to see the awesome new anime series when they come out (eventually, the first year or two will probably not have the current seasons). Those who wish to see the anime series can do so and legally. Advertisers hopefully make their money back, the site or service hopefully makes its money back, and those who enjoy anime get their fix as well.
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