Unfortunately, this article’s title is the sad truth. Last year this was not a problem as YTV’s Bionix lineup had shows like Bleach, Naruto, Death Note, Full Metal Alchemist, and Eureka Seven. This year, it seems the Bionix block has been revamped to air more kid friendly programming, leaving anime for older audiences to air in the wee hours of the morning. Fridays have a new block too: Big Fun Fridays (okay, seriously, YTV is that the best name you could think of for a block?). BFF will have a lot of family friendly programming, including their kids reality show, The Next Star along with a family friendly movie. We’ve noticed in the last 2-3 years YTV isn’t catering to kids exclusively as much as it used to, but has added shows for the whole family to enjoy such as Malcolm in the Middle and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Reading this story, it truly is a sad day in Canadian Television. In the last few years it has gotten a lot easier to find anime in Canadian stores, and YTV was the channel to watch because it had such great series on it like Ghost in the Shell, InuYasha and Witch Hunter Robin. So far, only Dinosaur King and Blue Dragon have been confirmed. And these are both anime aimed for younger audiences, with Dinosaur King already airing on Fox (hey, it’s a 4Kids property -_-) and Blue Dragon on Toonami Jetstream (Saturday Mornings). The glory of what used to be anime on Canadian TV has all been left in the past, it seems. Canadians are pretty limited now, with Space which shows Robotech, IFC which shows anime movies on occasion, ditto for Movie Central, and TCM, Super Channel which has Noein and Tokko, and Razer... oh wait, that channel was rebranded recently to MTV 2. Whatever are we going to do without the guilty pleasure that was Shin-Chan?
This is truly a sad day. We have to wonder where this leaves the status of YTV’s proposed anime channel.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
BREAKING NEWS: Anime, is all but dead on Canadian Television
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2 comments:
There a good rant about this at http://www.zannen.ca/node/637
The improvements then YTV did will be a big "jump the shark" for them. Home Improvement already reruns on CMT Canada and the Fresh-Prince of Bel-Air was good but don't age well compared to older series like Get Smart and WKRP in Cincinnati. I would like to see instead reruns of "You Can't Do that On Television" for example.
I guess I might switch back to CBC watching "This hour has 22 minutes" and "Royal Canadian Air Farce"
I wouldn't be so sure about Air Farce. It was supposed to be canceled but CBC has renewed it for a half season of 13 episodes. That is another show I will really miss - I enjoyed their takes on current events and Canadian politics!
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