Postby Roy Mustang » Tue Jan 11, 2011 11:01 am
Still, illegal streaming or downloading sites is not what killed ADV, Geneon and Central Park Media.
I already said what happen to Geneon, but I go into detail about ADV and CPM.
Where Central Park Media did their self in. Most of the titles that they had were stuff from the 80s and I can only think of a few that people would buy and that is Patlobor, Grave of the Fireflies, Record of Lodoss War, Revolutionary Girl Utena and Harlock Saga. The company was slow on releasing titles and at one point, they hadn't released anything on dvd for over a year.
Most fans think of Central Park Media, they think of their Anime 18 label, which was used to release hentai anime and never really thought of other titles that CPM relase that were non hentai. When CPM went under, it wasn't anime fans that were sad about this, but the hentai fans that hated to see CPM go.
Also CPM had legal problems as well. In March of 2007, Japanese Yaoi Publisher Libre posted a notice on its website saying that CPM's Be Beautiful division was illegally translating and selling its properties.
When Central Park Media filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in April 2009, they had a debt of over $1.2 million Off. Right up until its bankruptcy, CPM still licensed its anime titles for American television and VOD, despite having not released anything on video for over a year. CPM had a very bad business plan and they did their self in. A lot of anime fans saw this one coming a mile away, since how CPM took forever to release anything and it was a matter of time that they would go under.
ADV one was a mess. A lot of their problems started with Newtype USA magazine. It never really took off and ADV poured a lot of money into this and they had a problem trying to find advertising partners as well.
But the major thing that hit them hard was the Sojitz partnership in June 2006. Japanese Sojitz Corporation is a trading corporation that operates in many industries, including construction, forestry, plastics, chemicals, mining, petroleum, textiles, and international trade. The partnership was done as a means of acquiring more titles in the Japanese market. From this point on, virtually all titles that ADV acquired were with Sojitz's help. When Sojitz Corporation didn't see any return money on this deal with ADV, they pulled out of their partnership with ADV around late 2007 to early 2008. In January of 2008 is when ADV mysteriously removed a large number of titles from their website. All the titles that ADV removed were titles acquired since the Sojitz collaboration and since it was Sojitz's money that help acquired them, Sojitz own the titles rights. After that, ADV was never able to stand on their own two legs after that. Then in October of 2008, ADV entered into a licensing arrangement with Japanese partner Sentai Filmworks. In May of 2009, ADV/Sentai Filmworks acquired rights to some the titles from the bankruptcy and liquidation of Central Park Media.
In September of 2009, ADV announced that it as selling off its assets, including intellectual properties, its distribution arm and the Anime Network to four companies, Seraphim Digital Studios, AEsir Holdings LLC, Valkyrie Media Partners LLC and SXION 23 LLC. After this, ADV brand name and logo were retired and all of the four companies bought ADV assets were registered and initially filed by Griffin D. Vance IV, who was ADV's senior vice president of business and legal affairs.
The following companies all acquired assets from A.D. Vision:
Sentai Filmworks is the licensor company for acquiring Japanese anime into the North American market.
AEsir Holdings has licensed rights to most of ADV Films' former library of titles (some titles are licensed directly by Sentai Filmworks).
Seraphim Studios acquired Amusement Park Media, ADV's production studio, and it was renamed Seraphim Digital Studios.
Valkyrie Media Partners acquired the Anime Network. The network continues to operate as before the sale.
Section23 Films is a distributor and marketing company of Switchblade Pictures, Sentai Filmworks, and AEsir Holdings.
On the same day ADV made this announcement, major retail website Robert's Corner Anime Blog contacted Mike Baliff, formerly of ADV Films and now heading up Sales and Marketing at Section 23 Films. RCAB's interview revealed that "Section 23 has acquired all of ADV's former licenses and most of the staff" including "everyone at ADV that mattered."
In addition to the new companies that were created from the remains of ADV, Section 23 also took over distribution of Switchblade Films. The company focuses on low-budget J-horror and pink cinema titles and its DVDs had previously been distributed by ADV. No one is quite certain as to the exact relationship of Switchblade and Section 23. The executives listed on all Switchblade titles differ from those on all other Section 23 releases, and several industry insiders have been lead to believe that "Switchblade is someone else's baby". However, when the registration of the company was found, it was revealed that John Ledford (co-founder of ADV) had helped register the company.
ADV hadn't really shut down and the new companies such as Section 23 were basically ADV selling itself to itself: that it was not a shutdown but a drastic rebranding and restructuring. The report went on to say that Section 23 was, for all intents and purposes, the direct successor-organization to the old ADV company name, and that ADV split its assets such as the Anime Channel into the other three companies to take advantage of several legal loopholes.
In October, 2009, rival distribution company FUNimation Entertainment posted an online Q&A video panel hosted by events manager Adam Sheehan. When asked about ADV going out of business, Sheehan's response was the following:
“ ADV isn't out of business. ADV did remaster itself, as you might call it, and change itself into multiple different companies (Section 23, etc.), holding different parts of its brands, of its marketing, so [it's] still around...the best way I would describe it is to think of it as Voltron: if it turned back into the five lions, so its not the one Voltron robot anymore, so the ADV logo is no longer around, but the lions and all the properties are still around. â€
:hug::hug::hug::hug::hug:
