Aiimee said:There were many participants in this year's April Fools' Day so if I missed any, feel free to comment and let me know so I can add them!
You missed mine, where i posted a fake ANN link in the upcoming dubbed anime thread that said that Funimation/Crunchyroll were stopping dubs indefinitely due to VA drama regarding union dubbing.anime-prime said:Terrible news for dub fans.
As some of you may have heard, this past week there has been a bunch of talk about union dubbing and VAs demanding more pay from Funimation/Crunchyroll.
https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2022-03-28/the-battle-for-union-anime-dubs/.183842
Well, it seems like it has been settled, but not in the way that some might have been hoping. Since the VAs want more pay, and Crunchyroll/Funimation don't want to pay them more, and it's become such a huge public scandal, the large corporation has decided to suspend dubbing until further notice. Dubs currently airing will continue airing, but they won't start any new dubs starting from the Spring 2022 season. This is really sad, especially considering that this year was on track to be the best year of dubs yet, and of course right after the effects of Covid delays have ended, this issue pops up which will cause even more delays. Hopefully they resolve their conflict in time for the Summer 2022 season, but it's up in the air. These things can often take a long time. The full story explaining everything in greater detail is in the news article below.
https//www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2022-03-31/crunchyroll-suspends-dubbing-indefinitely-after-voice-actors-seek-unionization/.184975
Putting aside who is right or wrong, I am wondering if this will result in more profit for Funimation/Crunchyroll or if it will result in a loss of profit. I saw somewhere that the average cost of dubbing an episode of anime is around 10,000 dollars, so rounding down, dubbing a single cour of anime would be 100,000 dollars. And since they dub around 30 shows a season, let's just say they spend 3,000,000 dollars on dubbing each anime season. So that averages out to 1,000,000 dollars a month. That's how much they could potentially save. But at what cost? Well, if around 100,000 users stopped paying for various premium plans since they prefer dubs, then that would result in around a 1,000,000 dollar loss each month. So would it even be worth it for them? I wonder how many people would quit their memberships because of this. The sub community on the streaming site is vastly larger than the dub community, so perhaps they know they won't lose that many premium members. I guess we will see. Hopefully this isn't the end of dubs.