Will Funimation Fumble Online?
Exhibit A: Manga Entertainment offers only four anime series on iTunes, and it’s $50 for a season pass for 26 episodes of Ghost in the Shell — which you can watch for free on your DVR. I’d prefer the latest offerings from Japan in real time, and yes I don’t mind spelling errors in the subtitles.
The one thing entertainment companies never seem to get is the concept of “not invented here” which is the kiss of death in the tech business. This isn’t limited the ghetto of anime here in the United States, in fact a good example of this boneheaded behavior is when you see Viacom suing YouTube/Google. So while reading this Variety article on Funimation, this quote leaped off the page at me:
“Fukunaga is also confident in the company’s pay-per-download system, which is basically an HTML-based iTunes, but for anime. “There were a lot of rights issues, and we couldn’t monetize it fast enough last year,” he says apologetically — anime sites that don’t bother with copyright laws, like the recently reformed Crunchyroll.com, have become must-visit web destinations for anime fans. Now that Funimation is getting back its piece of that action, Fukunaga predicts that the download sales will soon exceed the company’s second-biggest asset, merchandising.”
Instead of reinventing the wheel why doesn’t Funimation focus on iTunes? If they priced each episode at $1 and put their entire catalog online I’d bet they increase their revenues. Now to be fair Gen Fukunaga has to negotiate each of those series with the Japanese, but I think the Anime studios have to understand that the market is in a bit of a glut and that their target audience has grown up with Napster. Or maybe Funimation and the Japanese studios should cozy up to Crunchyroll a bit more?
I’ve seen the other side and it isn’t pretty — Hulu was just launched by the networks and I have to say that the site just doesn’t do it for me. I’ve visited it only a few times, while I still find myself visiting YouTube and DailyMotion several times a day. Although it’s a different culture showbiz should embrace rather than emulate the techies.