So
I'm trying out Neon Alley on my PS3...doing their 1 week free trial
thing right now; It's pretty cool, I guess. I noticed it's not 100%
wall-to-wall Anime, the way we Gen X'ers annoyingly talk nostalgically
about 24/7 music videos on MTV...there are little adverts about Manga
release dates, or little promotional video segments from VIZ, etc. I
don't know how feasible it would be or if VIZ would be even interested
or reasonable in what they would charge, but if we Anime fans want Neon Alley to
succeed as a venture, how about you Anime podcasters stepping up and buying
some advertising time on Neon Alley for your own podcasts? Get a little
cross-promotion vibe going. Or if you don't have the budget for it, do a
kickstarter thing to buy advertising for your shows on Neon Alley. Let's pay
it forward...I also wonder if some of the Anime podcasts like Anime
Addicts Anonymous that have a video component could pay to air adds that
include little video excerpts from their podcast. Or a podcast network like A3K could put up a
static screen with the A3K logo and run one of Sean Russell's current
"bumper" ads that they guys already incorporate into their existing
podcasts. Since A3K is a network, their ads are actually excerpts & highlights from *several* existing podcasts.
I can tell you, the advertising on Neon Alley currently--is pretty lame except for the VIZ produced segments. VIZ owns Neon Alley. In fact, if you signed up for the VIZ manga app for iPad first, when you go to try out the free trial with Neon Alley, it will recognize you as an existing VIZ customer and you will need to input your same login credentials that you do for the VIZ manga app for iPad/iPhone. They will still let you do the free trial on Neon Alley, though, so no worries there.
Anyway, just a wild thought I had this morning.
I immediately jumped on Facebook and promoted this idea on the Facebook pages of my favorite Anime podcasters that have a presence there. Sean Ryan of Alpha Counter expressed some healthy skepticism and made the argument that it's kind of Cart-Before-Horse logic, that if anything Neon Alley should buy advertising from him; That Alpha Counter is not a business as such--just something he and some friends do for fun. True, true. And Stephen Gary "Steve" Wozniak and Steve jobs were just some friends doing something for just for fun once upon a time also.
No, I mean, I get it. And you can always come up with a better argument *not* to do something. It's always easier to argue the negative case. Trust me, as a natural born pessimist I know this as well as anyone.
I realize that for prominent Anime podcasters...from more professional outlets like ANNCast and A.W.O., to magazines like Otaku USA, down to humble labors of love like 2Lazy2Botaku or Fightbait.com....this is not a money-ahead situation just yet. At the outset, it's essentially a form of voluntary charity...and to a for-profit corporation no less (VIZ).
It's difficult to quantify, I grant you...but we live in an information economy...and there's a certain intangible spark that this kind of cross-promotion thing could kick off. As I briefly put it to Sean Ryan after his reasonable objection, imagine a typical teenaged PS3 owner who is sort of into Anime and logs in to Neon Alley every once in awhile, just to see what's up. He cuts over and...sees his favorite anime's ending credits...crap! They're going to commercial...but wait, what's this? (sees Alpha Counter logo, hears host Sean & co-hosts engage in some pretty amusing/raunchy banter) Hey, that's pretty funny! Kid fires up the built in Web-browser in the PS3 to check out AlphaCounter.com, decides to subscribe in iTunes and listens to a few epsisodes over the next week. He likes it so much and impulsively buys an Alpha Counter t-shirt to show off at school, and at the local comic book/Anime convention next month. His friends see it an ask him about it. Other fans recognize him at the con and compliment him on the t-shirt, discuss the most recent episode of Method-to-Madness...stuff happens...
I realize it's far fetched, I realize my pitch sounds like the unederpants gnomes at this stage...but I really think the Anime fan community could come together and really collaborate with VIZ to make something beautiful out of Neon Alley.
Or we could sit on our asses and watch Neon Alley fail in a year from now and *Le Sigh* and say oh well, too bad that failed...wish Anime were more popular, wish there was something I could do more to support the industry than buy DVDs here and there....or say to ourselves "Hey, I subscribe to Netflix and/or FUNimation, isn't that enough", etc.
I listen to a LOT of Anime podcasts these days; it's my 2nd favorite thing to do besides, y'know, actually watching Anime. Reading Manga comes in a distant 3rd.
I don't know if Neon Alley will be a successful venture. I don't know if it deserves to be. I do know that as a dub fan I have precious little interest in actually getting a paid subscription to Crunchyroll. I did download the Crunchyroll app onto my PS3, and I do appreciate at least being able to watch sample episode ones of current shows that all the sub fans are raving about around me---titles I'm passingly familiar with and that some of which I hope DO get a dub someday. The ones I will watch on CR are shows that I know have ZERO hope of getting a dub because they're way too culturally specific to Japan.
I don't know if Neon Alley will work---since it basically functions like an extra cable TV channel...and has a set schedule of shows and no way to DVR it. It's not V.O.D. and that may be its downfall. Maybe it's doomed. But it is NEAT, and the current ads are LAME and could be so much better if infused with creative content from talented Anime podcast producers. It would require a bit of investment (charity, to be fair) to buy advertising on Neon Alley, but the reward would potentially be increased listenership to these podcasts and hopefully increasingly better informed Anime fans as a result...
I think we Anime fans, especially the über-fans who lovingly produce their own serial podcasts devoted to Anime, don't realize their power. We're too atomized and I'm sure many a podcaster feels like s/he is speaking into a void. I think we have ways where we could help each other out. Just by getting the word out and motivating people. Stirring up passions can lead to great things.
Or we can sit on our asses and just keep bemoaning the death of Anime.
