ANN published a story yesterday about how the liquidation of Central Park Media’s assets is being conducted through MYC & Associates, a New York-based “full service auction, appraisal, liquidation, real estate brokerage & management firm dedicated to obtaining market value for bank owned and court administered assets”. In case you didn’t already know, CPM filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy in late April.
On its listing for CPM, MYC has linked to a Schedule of Assets that contains 23 pages of 547 copyrights relating to releases; two pages of trademarks including “Anime Alley”, “Anime Today”, and “Mangamusic”; office equipment and furnishings such as chairs, computers, and telephones; 12 domain names with expiration dates; a listing of “licences, franchises, and other general intangibles” consisting of four distribution agreements (Warner-Elektra-Atlantic Corporation, Consortium Book Sales & Distribution, KOCH Entertainment Distribution LLC, AD Vision) and one consignment agreement (The Right Stuf International); and a five-page consignment inventory to TRSI.
The components of the Schedule has different dates: the copyrights listing is a draft from 5/23/2006, trademarks listing is a draft from 9/29/2004, domain names from April 7th, and the consignment inventory is as of April 3rd. The distribution agreement with AD Vision was dated March 26, 2009, and was “for distribution of DVDs and related merchandise in Canada and in the United States”. Since then, AD Vision hasannounced that it would reissue former CPM titles such as Now and Then, Here and There, Grave of the Fireflies, MD Geist, The World of Narue, and Darkside Blues.
My rough understanding of the chapter 7 process is that CPM’s assets will be sold off and proceeds from those sales would be distributed among creditors that have filed a Proof of Claim, showing they are indeed owed money by the debtor (CPM). Even though previously licensed titles are among their assets, it seems they did not have permanent and therefore only the elements that they produced – subtitles, dubbing, and packaging – would be available for purchase. Potential buyers of any intellectual property would still have negotiate with the respective Japanese right holders in order to be able to legally distribute them in North America. (ANN’s list of properties – which at least one site has copy and pasted – includes The Slayers, which is currently being distributed by FUNimation.)
Regarding the court case itself, I decided to sign up for a PACER account so I could do some research and look at the documents that have been filed so far in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York. Judge Prudence Carter Beatty is presiding over the case, Raymond A. Bragar is representing CPM, and David R. Kittay is the trustee. The only future scheduled event is a continuance of a Meeting of Creditors (aka 341 meeting) on July 2nd.
The following are creditors that have so far filed a Proof of Claim (deadline is Sept. 1st):
Bank of America
Biblos Co., Ltd./Libre (previously had a dispute with CPM about Be Beautiful manga)
Consortium Books Sales and Distribution (has a distribution agreement)
Cushman & Wakefield, Inc. (commercial real estate firm)
Fisk Building Management
KOCH Entertainment Inc. (renamed E1 Entertainment in Jan. 2009; has a distribution agreement)
Levi Lubarsky & Feigenbaum, LLP (commercial litigation firm)
Moses & Singer (legal services firm)
NCO Financial Systems Inc.
Pittney Bowes Credit Corp.
Quebecor Printing Lebonfon (a Canadian printer)
Wells Fargo
XO Communications Services, Inc.
I also found out that there are two associated cases to CPM’s (09-12530): Binary Media Works, Inc. (09-12532) and Mangamania, Inc. (09-12533), both wholly owned subsidiaries of CPM. Binary Media Works designed some of their web pages (e.g., Grave of the Fireflies) and held some domains in their name including ufocity.com. Mangamania was the name of an online storefront that is still up, searchable, and links to TRSI listings of products.
I’ll keep tabs on this case and post updates with whatever details I come across. Expect those posts to be as dry as this one.
FUNimation announced Monday (saw this on Anime Vice) that they have joined Comcast’s On Demand service through two folders: The Cutting Edge, where other anime video-on-demand offerings like Anime Network reside, and Movies & Events, where pay-per-view content can be found. While the addition of already-released series through a standard free VOD model is nice for me as a customer, I’m finding “pre-release pay-per-view access” that “provides unprecedented sneak peek access to brands before the release on DVD” a little more interesting. PPV offerings for this month will include xxxHOLiC, Devil May Cry, and Tsubasa while Honey & Clover and NANA are mentioned among those slated for this summer. (I shouldn’t have been too surprised to see those last two considering this but I still was.) I will try to explore both folders tomorrow and maybe I’ll shoot a video while doing that.
This story reminds me of one that may not have received much press when it came out in mid-April: the appearance of streaming and DTO labels on Viz’s websites for the Honey & Clover and NANA anime. Both components are currently unavailable but at least one of them is likely to be enabled this summer since the first NANA box set is supposedly due out July 21st.
The DTO episodes should carry the now-standard price of $1.99 per episode for downloadable videos and could just entail links to various download services (iTunes, Zune Marketplace, et al.). I wonder what their PPV price on Comcast might be – according to their VOD blog post, Funi has their new dubbed series pre-DVD release series pegged at 99 cents – a very reasonable price point considering you’ll if you choose to watch that way – so it’s very likely that Viz’s will bear that price as well, but there is still a chance it could be a little higher. Their $2.99 price point for movies is the same that Comcast offers for library titles on their general Movies on Demand service and that Apple does for library titles on its Apple TV and through iTunes. I suspect that the streaming component might involve Hulu if they are planning to embed episodes onto each respective show site since Viz also uses that for Naruto.com.
FUNimation’s foray into PPV adds another method of non-DVD distribution for the company along with streaming episodes through Hulu, YouTube, Joost, Veoh, and their own video portal as well as offering download-to-own episodes through their web site, iTunes, Xbox Live & Zune Marketplaces and, most recently, the Playstation Network. Viz has been making similar strides into “alternative” distribution with a presence on many of the same video portals and marketplaces that FUNimation is on. They also brokered an arrangement to stream newly-aired-in-Japan episodes of Naruto Shippuden on Crunchyroll, Hulu, and their own Naruto site.
The “octopus approach” operated by both companies continues to take them to new platforms, though Viz has some catching up to do. Meanwhile, Bandai just began on putting episodes on YouTube in February and currently have Code Geass season 1 and Gundam 00 up there. They don’t have the financial flexibility to venture out as much as the other two do but at least they’re starting to experiment with it.
P.S. I know this is all US-centric stuff so if you choose to make a comment, don’t just complain about regional restrictions. By the way, Evan Flournoy, Manager of Brand Protection and Rights Enforcement for Funimation, said last week that those restrictions are mandated by the licensors.
In this week’s Anime Corner Store newsletter, Robert divulged a small update on the Geneon situation, namely, that they have been “in serious talks with a major US home entertainment distributor” (Paramount?) to get some of their series back on store shelves. He can’t reveal any specifics at the risk of ruining his firm’s relationship but he did say the company is new to the anime space, that they will likely pick and choose which titles are included in the deal.
I would expect an announcement to occur in the next couple months if a deal indeed gets made. You can read the unedited section from this week’s newsletter yourself after the jump and begin to speculate on your own. Read the rest of this entry »
Earlier this week, ANN reported that listings for recent ADV Films titles including Kanon, Gurren Lagann, and Sgt. Frog have been removed from the company’s website and store. Soon after, a spokesman for the company told them that they are “working through a few short-term challenges and fully intends to continue our releases”. However, further information has come out in the form of a canceled ICv2 article that was posted on a couple forums and subsequently Robert’s Anime Corner Blog and, at least for me, puts a new light to the breaking down of negotiations with Geneon late last year. It’s not as horrible as Geneon – the reason why it’s a canceled article is that something got worked out – but it’s still something I’m concerned about as this industry continues to traverse a rough patch. Read the rest of this entry »
ICv2 posted an interview with Funimation founder Gen Fukunaga where he was asked about many issues including the state of the US anime market, timing of releases and the impact and future of legal and illegal downloading. What follows are highlights from the question-and-answer session:
Mr. Fukunaga began by stated the obvious, that “illegal downloads are definitely an issue” and that “the main mode of monetization of the customer [DVD sales] is definitely suffering”. He also thinks that Japanese companies has “suddenly woken up” after seeing “the huge difficulties some of [Funimation's] competitors are having” (read: Geneon) and that they are “talking a lot about this issue”.
This morning ANN published an editorial by Justin Sevakis, the founder of ANN who now works for Imaginasian TV, in which he described the sorry state the industry is currently in financially, how it got to that state of affairs, and the problems preventing any significant change from happening. Apparently, the numbers are “terrifying” and the business model is clearly failing. His doom-and-gloom piece, I think, made many good points about how difficult the situation is now for licenses to break even due to years non-interference with fansub distribution. Read the rest of this entry »
In the first part of a ICv2 interview that was posted today, Bandai Visual USA president Tatsunori Konno said that there are not “more than 200,000 core fans” and estimated its size in dollars to be $350 million. Konno also clarified the difference between Bandai Visual and Bandai Entertainment and the company’s relationship with Sunrise. There was mention of the Wings of Honneamise being released in DVD/Blu-ray and DVD/HD-DVD packs at an MSRP of $79.99, which is double Freedom’s $39.99 MSRP. That is likely because Honneamise has a “quite long” running time (120 minutes vs. Freedom’s 25 minutes) and thus requires two separate discs (1 regular DVD & 1 hi-def DVD) instead of a single twin-format disc with HD and standard-def on the same side.
Konno said in part two that the company wants to let fans to know they are producing high quality products and that if people notice and buy it, prices could reduce gradually. Even with that justification, RightStuf, AnimeNation, RACS, and Amazon each have their pre-order prices at or below $59.99. Wings of Honneamise comes out in high-definition for both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray on September 11th, a little something nice to distract us Americans from the “anniversary” coverage the news media is bound to do on that particular Tuesday.
Remember John Ledford’s mention of “B” titles a month ago? I had kind of forgotten about it until I came upon two things recently that mentioned it. This week’s edition of the AnimeNation News Podcast released on Thursday covered the topic and an ICv2 interview with Mike Balliff, ADV Senior VP of Sales, mentioned the phrase in a question about whether popularity in Japan is a good indicator of success in America.
Every week on the AnimeNation News Podcast, the hosts cover the news of the past week as well as two or three Ask John questions. The question from June 22nd, “Why Don’t ‘B’ Titles Sell in America Anymore?”, was the first of two to be discussed and below is the audio from the June 28th episode:
Yesterday, ANN posted a two-page interview with John Ledford in which topics spanning the revival of their manga department, licensing, and the anime market in general. One thing I took note of when reading it was Ledford’s reference to A, B, and C ranked titles. First, he used the term referring to buying habits:
If there are 20 titles or a hundred, you’re only going to have 10 percent or 15 percent be considered marketable. A lot of stuff might be very oriented to the Japanese domestic market; other things might simply be just B or C grade titles in today’s market. They may have sold 5 years ago, but thanks to the download business, most people buy their A titles and they download their Bs and Cs. There is no market for B and C titles anymore.
A question later, he used it in discussing retail shelf space:
Five years ago, three years ago you could buy anything and almost anything would sell, not everything but almost. Now you have to be a sniper. You have to snipe the good titles, that’s all that will sell. Everything else, the stores don’t want it, the fans will download it.
…
There’s simply not enough shelf space and the product doesn’t turn fast enough. So I think that’s what you’re going to see. A much lower quantity of titles but you’ll see a better quality. Perhaps some silly company will put some Bs or Cs out there, but that’ll come back to them.
So, don’t be surprised if certain anime with little or no profit potential in America stays unlicensed for many years even though you REALLY want it to appear on Region 1 DVD.
When I win the lottery, I’ll put some of the money toward starting my own anime licensing business and form the “silly company” that Ledford referred to that produces B or C titles. Hopefully, the quality will be better than what Illumitoon first put out and maybe it’ll start out subbed-only with lower MSRPs to get people to buy the titles with less buzz. Oh well, it’s just a idea at the moment – I don’t even know what I’d call this fake business!
Almost everyone in the fan community dislikes 4Kids Entertainment for how they have handled titles like One Piece and some of them wish they would go out of business. Well, the company reported on Friday a $2.3 million net loss for the quarter ending December 31, 2006 and a $1.0 million loss for the year ending 12/31/06 (net gain for 2005 was $5.1 million), but they still have over $18 million in cash and $111 million in total cash and investments so they’re not going out of business in the immediate future. However, there is room for concern as their net revenue as steadily decreased over the past two years from $99.1 million in 2004 to $71.8 million in 2006.
cropped from 
In the 
Entries (RSS)