< Screwed by the Network

Screwed by the Network/Anime

  • In a rare subversion, Code Geass seems to be a case where Screwed by the Network didn't end up killing the show. Reportedly, Sunrise was wary of giving too much leeway and many resources to a director like Goro Taniguchi, still relatively untested and with a reputation for absolute perfectionism. According to the staff, in the early days of the show they had to share offices (and copiers) with other productions, and were only about three episodes ahead in terms of writing, while most shows are 8-10 episodes ahead. On top of all this, Sunrise only gave Taniguchi half of the fifty episodes he wanted...but the runaway success of the show convinced them to give it an Oddly-Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo. But after this announcement, they then changed the time slot for the sequel from after Midnight to 5:00 PM Sunday, which forced the staff to alter their original plans for Season 2 and made them tone down parts of the series. For many fans the most notable casualty ended up being the second half of Code Geass R2, whose rushed pacing was a result of having to rewrite much of the first half in order to allow newcomers to understand what was going on.
  • After War Gundam X suffered this in Japan when it got moved from 5:00 PM on Fridays to 6:00 AM on Saturdays; its 49-episode run was also cut down to 39 episodes.
  • Sailor Moon was screwed over in syndication when the episodes were shown in early morning dead timeslots on weekdays only. What kid is going to wake up at 4:00am on a weekday? The show was never successful in the states until it found life on Toonami three years later.
  • "Hey, I'm Naruto-- bringer of ratings for Cartoon Network. I'm going to the UK to make fans happy there! Hey, Jetix UK-- I'm so glad you want to show me to UK Fans. ...Wait, what's that rusty kni--?"
    • Naruto's mangled corpse was found in a graveyard slot. No one attended the funeral because their parents would rather have dinner parties in Coronation Street and Albert Square.
    • When the license of Naruto was acquired by Cartoon Network Latin America, many fans rejoiced. However, CN didn't consider airing it until 5 years later (In fact, they did not even start dubbing it before that). So, by the time the first episodes were airing, the rest of the world was already watching Shippuden. As for 2012, it seems improbable that we will reach the last season.
  • A curious case occurred in Israel with Cowboy Bebop. The then-budding cable comedy channel "Beep" bought the show during the height of anime fever in the early 2000s. The series was aired once, in an after-Midnight slot, presumably due to adult content. Then, after many requests by fans to run it again in a more manageable slot, it was re-aired on Friday mornings -- basically the worst time slot for any channel or show on Israeli television. It has not been aired since.
  • Slayers and Magic Knight Rayearth were both screwed by Fox Kids. Toonami was interested in both shows, but Fox Kids picked up both so that Toonami could never obtain them. What does Fox Kids do? They didn't do anything with them! Fox Kids basically sat on the broadcast rights to the shows until their rights expired and Toonami was no longer interested. Slayers has since been broadcast on the defunct International Channel, Colours TV, and the Funimation Channel. Rayearth, however, has never been shown anywhere.
  • Cartoon Network also consigned IGPX: Immortal Grand Prix to death as well. Season 1 aired on Toonami, and when executives weren't happy with the ratings, switched its timeslot to right before Adult Swim in the middle of Season 2. What made things worse was that apart from a few commercials, they pretty much did not inform anybody of this move at all.
  • You're Italia Uno, an Italian network whose main public is made of young people and children, so everyday you broadcast various cartoons, mostly Japanese, in the after-lunch and pre-evening timeslots, and you also have the obligatory Saturday-morning cartoon marathon. The latter two are directed to more young children, while the first is supposed to appeal to adolescents. Whenever a cartoon in the after-lunch slot manages to have a decent rating (despite the Mackering policy the channel applies to Japanese animation), what can you do to valorize it? Move it to one of the other two timeslots, what else? The ratings decrease because children don't find appealing an anime created for an older public and because on Saturday mornings adolescents are at school? How could this possibly happen?
  • Cartoon Network showed .hack//Roots at 5:00 AM on Saturday mornings with no advance advertising -- or really any mention at all. They also only showed 21 of the 26 episodes, supposedly to avoid airing .hack//G.U. game spoilers. The show vanished eight months later when Adult Swim went to an all-night format.
    • .hack//SIGN suffered the same fate, first airing on Saturday afternoons in the late afternoon Toonami Slot, then being bumped to midnight.
    • Note that SIGN changed timeslots right after two female characters started dating each other. Presumably, CN thought this was too much for impressionable youths.
  • Unlike other countries, Spain did show Pichi Pichi Pitch thanks to Clan TVE. However, in a flash of inspiration, it started in July (Because kids in holidays watch a lot of TV), and while it was on a decent timeslot (11:30 AM), they kept shuffling it a half-hour back or forward every other week, whenever the previous/next show ended its run (Instead of, y'know, putting a new different show on the timeslot of the finished one). All fine and dandy, as long as you checked every Monday's schedule, but then they changed its timeslot on a Wednesday. Why? Because it was October 1, and new month means rearranging the schedule without telling anyone. And since this show just hadn't had enough, they changed it again one week and a half later, this time being shoved to 2:00 PM right against newscasting and The Simpsons. At least this time they bothered repeating the last episode in case someone missed it with so many changes.
  • Telecinco, another Spanish channel, used to broadcast Pokémon during the height of Pokémania, with millions of viewers. The executives didn't like people watching them so they started to broadcast it sooner and sooner and repeating episodes all they could so as to kill any interest. After they managed to put the series at 6AM it slowly died. It is sad because children got up early just to watch Pokémon and it had a lot of audience. They just didn't care, the network just hates anything that is not sensationalist, a talk show or about naked celebrities and it shows.
    • And when the series finished? Instead of rerunning it (a common occurrence in Spain), they replaced it with... Pretty Cure, a show that had already been shown on two other channels. So if you had missed any episode of PPP (likely), you had to wait several months until they decided to rerun it (without advertising this, of course) and catch the episode. Thanks.
  • The original Mobile Suit Gundam practically embodies this Trope. Originally meant to run for 52 episodes, low ratings caused the plug to be pulled after 39 episodes; the staff, however, managed to get a one month extension to 43 episodes in order to finish the story.
    • In America, it never even got to finish its first airing as Cartoon Network used September 11th as an excuse to remove it, mostly due to low ratings.
  • Canada's YTV so completely screwed its Bionix anime block that it almost makes Cartoon Network's screwing look minor in comparison. The block originally ran from 7:30 to 10:30 on Friday nights and aired five different shows. However, when Death Note and Gundam SEED Destiny ended, YTV failed to pick up any new shows to replace them with that had been picked up in the States, such as Code Geass or Gundam 00. As such, the block was significantly shortened and moved to Saturday nights, isolating more of its viewing audience. After Avatar: The Last Airbender ended, they did pick up Blue Dragon but the run was short, barely lasting 15 or 20 episodes. All they had left at that point was Naruto, Bleach, and Zatch Bell, and they cut Zatch Bell a few months later. With only Naruto and Bleach left, they shifted what was left of the block to run from Midnight to 2:00 AM, pretty much killing off what was left of the audience. Not only that, but both series were in filler hell, meaning that nobody would really want to watch anyway. And to complete the screwing over of this block, once the filler episodes ran out, they simply went back to reruns. That's right: no Shippuden, and no Arrancar Saga. With that, YTV pretty much had the perfect excuse to cut anime altogether. Where Bionix once was is now sitcoms and reality shows.
  • The Prince of Tennis and MAR had an unusual version of this Trope happen to them. Sure, they got a decent time slot, but Cartoon Network randomly skipped episodes. Since these were serials, nobody could follow the plot. Eventually, they started over from Episode 1 and aired them in order, but by then it was too late. They were removed from the lineup, and eventually removed from being aired online, too.
  • Anime in general on Adult Swim is considered as this these days, partly due to Cartoon Network's Network Decay. It was somewhat admitted in a Adult Swim bump that at times a kind of programming spring cleaning is done every few months by Cartoon Network to see which shows to keep airing, air later, or get rid of and never even bother showing again. The cleaning process is created by an evaluating combination of ratings and audience online based reaction. Thus shows like Lupin and Reign are very little or no longer aired. Even to AS' chagrin many of the shows that they themselves would have liked to kept on the air are cast by the wayside. However another reason for anime not getting much love is that one of those in charge of [adult swim]'s programming doesn't like it. With the exceptions of Cowboy Bebop, FLCL, and Inuyasha, many Anime titles these days are given little chance. Adult Swim has often rather been vocal about their increasing dis-contempt about Anime and the block. Bumps regularly criticize it, commercials show their Narm moments and episode descriptions on their website tend to read like "Vampires, robots, big hats!". Perfect Hair Forever basically boils down to several hours of Take That against the whole genre.
    • The Big O is a specific example to this. Despite that it was a popular show and the ratings of Adult Swim airings were the sole reason the series even got a second season in the first place, the premiere of the second season was around the same time Adult Swim began its Network Decay, and they ended up screwing up the airing of a couple episodes (including accidentally airing a repeat over the finale) and ended up canceling the show before a reportedly expected third season, despite it having paid off financially.
    • Moribito Guardian of the Spirit was constantly schedule-switch later and later until it aired at 5:30 AM EST by Adult Swim, dropped after 10 episodes, restarted in a better timeslot, and then got dropped again after Geneon went bankrupt, and it was removed from the air until the licensing issues were resolved. However, the problems were eventually solved, and Adult Swim re aired and completed the series between June and December 2009.
  • Speaking of Cartoon Network's Network Decay, the canceling of the Toonami block (and this also applies to Western Animation as well). The decay began when it was moved from every weekday to Saturdays only, and the block's time slot was cut in half; its schedule eventually consisted of reruns, filler, and Naruto; it was replaced by the network's new darling (Miguzi) the week following its move to Saturdays-only...the list goes on and on. Long story short, it was canceled by Cartoon Network, which was supposedly due to bad ratings, despite the fact they were the ones causing them.
    • One might say that Toonami's decay began as early as 2000-2001, when Kids WB forced Cartoon Network to cut its 3-hour Toonami back down to 2 so they could air their own Toonami, canceling a few long-runners like Tenchi Muyo and Sailor Moon. It picked up when 9/11 helped cause the cancellation of the original Mobile Suit Gundam and had its entire run filled with Dragon Ball and Dragonball Z.
  • Animax Latin America --beginning with its Network Decay-- did this:
    • Fate/stay night and Black Cat, originally getting decent time slots on friday night were moved to saturday mornings at 8:00 AM for the second half of each series' run.
    • Solty Rei was moved in a pretty bad time slot, airing after two live-action shows (The Middleman and Distraction).
    • It also killed any chances that they'll air more new Bleach episodes.
    • To add shows that were supposed to air were Hell Girl's second season, Gallery Fake, Monkey Typhoon, Requiem for a Phanthom, and Dancouga Nova. Now THAT'S getting screwed.
    • By the time the channel rebranded as Sony Spin, anime as a whole was only aired at early morning hours. This changed in March 2012, when the remaining lineup was replaced by live action shows, thus finally eliminating the anime medium as a whole.
  • YTV's dub of Futari wa Pretty Cure is getting a nasty case of this. To make it worse, YTV is the studio making the dub.
  • Yu Yu Hakusho's run in America was screwed by a huge time slot move. Originally aired on Adult Swim, it was moved to a fairly steady time slot on Toonami. Then, for a reason still unexplained, it was removed from Toonami near the end of the show, and moved to 4:30 in the morning on Saturday. Many people weren't even aware it was moved, and those who did had to be pretty dedicated to stay up for the remaining episodes.
  • Kids WB screwed around with Pokémon, airing as many new episodes they could, and then airing reruns for several months (often airing episodes Out of Order or certain ones to death) when they exhausted them. They did this for a few years until fans started to get annoyed and move on to other shows, and Pokémon itself declined in popularity.
  • Fox Kids tried to sell the dub of Vision of Escaflowne (skipping the first episode) as a kids show, rolling it out alongside the likes of Digimon and Beast Machines without realizing it delved into some fairly mature stuff in the latter half of the show. They quickly shelved it after about 10 episodes and tried to forget about it. YTV in Canada, which began its run of the series shortly after Fox did, quickly learned from Fox's mistake and aired the entire series in prime time with appropriate content warning bumpers attached to it.
  • Meanwhile, back in Japan... After the 2011 Sendai earthquake, MBS, the station with first airing rights for Puella Magi Madoka Magica refused to air the final two episodes for over a month, far in excess of what happened to any other series, some of which could well be argued to be less sensitive about the tragedy than the events of Madoka. Though, this ultimately failed to screw the series, as it continued to be mind-bendingly popular.
  • Syfy's anime block is horribly in this funk. Starting off as a Monday anime block entitled "Ani-Monday" for famous anime movies and such --- it later became "Ani-Tuesday" around the time their hit Monster ended. It Got Worse. They decided to play motion comics, which completely makes "ani" look like it means nothing. Around the end of Ani-Tuesday, they changed their schedule to play Chrono Crusade and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann Tuesday nights at 11 PM. Then Thursday nights at 11 PM. Then Friday mornings at...2 AM. Then, of course, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann was replaced with Star Blazers, an old 70's toon. Two weeks after the Star Blazers premiere, the block went on a "hiatus", which was later confirmed to be an outright cancellation.
  • Mega Man NT Warrior deserves a mention, its time slot was constantly being shifted, and new episodes tended to be delayed, sometimes cycling between new episodes and reruns without warning, and then delaying it for weeks before going back to new episodes, and then taking it off the air completely before deciding to air the third season, when the third season came, Kids WB moved it to a weekday afternoon time slot, at a time when most kids were still in school, and then moved it back to Saturday mornings, then cancelling it, never airing the remainder of the third season, what's worse is that the later seasons were not even dubbed thanks to the cancellation.
  • Tokyo Mew Mew AKA Mew Mew Power was 4KidsTV's highest rated show on its Saturday morning kids block at one time, however, only 26 of the 52 episodes were dubbed into English, and only 23 were actually broadcast in the US. The reason? Apparently, 4Kids cared a lot more about merchandise sales than ratings. The show wasn't able to get a merchandise deal at all in the US because its modest 52 episode run being too short compared to the giant franchises that dominated the toy shelves, and basically, no licensor was interested in it. Despite the show's ratings success, 4Kids pretty much stopped caring about it, and never bothered to license the second half of the series for an international release. What's worse is that episode 26 ended on a sharp cliffhanger complete with a To Be Continued message! 4Kids spared US viewers from this by not showing the last 3 episodes, and instead ending on a typical "Monster-of-the-Day" episode. However, all 26 episodes of Mew Mew Power were broadcast in Canada, Australia, the UK, and pretty much... every other country around the world! That's right! 4Kids pretty much screwed over the show in close to a dozen foreign languages that were based off of their version, complete with the cliffhanger ending!
    • 4KidsTV also screwed over Kirby Right Back At Ya and Shaman King, airing them at the same time that Kids WB ran Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh!, 4Kids' biggest cash cows. 4Kids knew they couldn't compete with them, so they sacrificed Kirby and Shaman King to the competing timeslots, knowing they would be killed in the ratings.
  • Stitch! in the US on Disney XD. After 4 episodes, it got cancelled for maybe a few weeks. Maybe it was because it was broadcast when most kids were in school!
    • Or maybe Disney XD is just re-doing their schedule like they do every few months. Both Stitch! and fellow bad-timeslot show Recess (though it's in reruns) aired for four days and were removed, but they might be put back on once Disney XD fixes their schedule.
  • The UK treatment of Inazuma Eleven is, frankly, a Shakespearian tale of woe. In short, the game was released in English in Europe at the start of 2011; however, Nintendo of Europe decided the UK needed to air the dub of the anime first (in a country that is notorious for not giving anything more intellectual than Pokémon a look-in anime wise) and then the anime only aired for a month in the summer. Oy vay.
  • Superbook is still screwed on TBN's Smile of a Child in every morning timeslot and it's started at 3am CT/4am ET.
  • Love Hina's Latin American Spanish dub was screwed by both the (amateur) voice actors and the network at the same time!: While Love Hina is infamous for being extremely hard to dub, the Latin American Spanish dub suffered from being dubbed almost entirely by amateur voice actors (Due of a voice actors' strike in Mexico after The Simpsons' original voice actors were replaced with non-unionized actors). Due of the subpar performance of almost all the voice cast, (not to mention it was broadcasted on a midnight slot), Cartoon Network pulled out the series after his first run due to the complaints about the voice acting and it was never broadcasted since then.
  • Naruto Shippuden was briefly treated well by Disney XD, when the early episodes of the show were light-hearted fun for tween boys...then Disney discovered the show would get more violent, and pushed it to a later time slot and didn't notify the Shonen Jump publishers advertising the show on Disney XD in the magazine of it, causing the time to be wrong for Shonen Jump readers. Then the show was preempted by tweencoms at the last minute twice, then just plain disappeared from the schedule. Disney XD has since removed all Naruto material from their website.
  • CITV has been somewhat awful at showing action cartoons without losing control of its bowels (ReBoot was infamously cancelled in mid-series for being "too violent"). Pokémon is the only action cartoon they didn't up and out cancel before the strand "Evolved" into its channel incarnation (Cardcaptor Sakura got to the second half of the Sakura Card arc before being yanked and Digimon only got three episodes of Tamers out of the gate before it suffered the same fate. Card Captors, at the very least, got to finish its run as filler for Formula One races and on GMTV)
    • Digimon was probably one of the most poorly handled programmes at CITV, throughout its run the series was treated with little regard, as episodes were repeated to hell, shown once and never again, or just missed altogether. With Digimon Adventure, CITV actually skipped most of the third arc and went straight into the fourth, meaning Kari and Gatomon appeared seemingly out of nowhere and Myotismon's fate went unknown (the arc was broadcast a couple of years later, albeit at a time when it wasn't really relevant anymore). Digimon Adventure 02 got even worse treatment, with the second half of the series being broadcast at a painfully slow, on-and-off rate until, three episodes from the end, CITV dropped the series and aired the first three episodes of Digimon Tamers in its place! To add insult to injury, CITV never broadcast any more Tamers episodes (or even repeated the three they'd shown already), and never broadcast the concluding episodes of Adventure 02, which they could've shown anyway had they not decided to replace them with Tamers episodes.
  • G4 seemed to screw over Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi by airing it late at night over a course of eight days, not rerunning the whole series, then completely washing their hands of it. It's rumored they were uneasy about some of the content, as some things couldn't be edited out due to them being plot-important. No other show on Anime Unleashed got such cruel treatment.
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