[MarsHottentot]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aoi Kurenai

I forget which way it is but Toei/TV Asahi owns a piece of TV Asahi/Toei, so I doubt Sentai would ever be in serious danger of being outright canceled. Instead, any likely end would come because the shows just don't move toys anymore. Sentai has less of an advertiser problem because Toei is the main advertiser. Watch any Sentai episode live and you'll see 95%-100% of the commercials are for either for the Sentai's toys itself or other Toei products.

That said, the crew cares about ratings when they're good. It's something they can boast about. (they did so with Kamen Rider Decade and W)

What's scary is that you don't actually need a show to move toys. There are some long running toy lines with no shows attached them.




So, Ryukendo's an interesting situation. Its main sponsor, TV Aichi, had it airing at 6 AM, which is going to give you low ratings no matter what but if you look at stuff that aired in similar timeslots, even years later, the numbers were about the same. (Ryukendo's ratings were about the same as Digimon Xros Wars, Saint Seiya Omega, and World Trigger). Ryukendo did get a decent slot in TV Tokyo run at 7 AM on Sundays, but those episodes aired a week after the TV Aichi airings.

Ryukendo was also probably sold as a big package deal. The show was actually supposed to air an entire year before it did and so by the time it actually began, filming was already complete. My understanding of the situation is that this is the reason we didn't get a second entry into what would have been the Madan franchise. Takara employed a lot of third party people for CGI and production work, so by the time the show was airing, the only way you could realistically keep the franchise going is by yet again filming the entire show in advance, which isn't a great idea. There's about 14 months between Ryukendo and Rescue Force and I think that allowed the crew enough time to work on something else and reassemble.

Wow! I didn't know any of this - thanks!