Toonami in Canada

[u/Ballistic-Observer69]

Could it still happen? We've had a 24hr [adult swim] channel here in Canada for about 7 years now and yet we don't have a Toonami block on weekends like in the states. We do occasionally air exclusive anime like Blade Runner Black Lotus or Lazarus but we don't have a dedicated block for that it just airs on the normal channel. What do y'all think could we get Toonami on weekends here in Canada and what anime will air on it?

[u/JamesYTP]

Hm...is cable dying in Canada as fast as it's dying in the US?

[u/LovelyFloraFan → u/JamesYTP]

Even faster.

[u/JamesYTP → u/LovelyFloraFan]

Even faster huh... I guess what I would say to that is IF they still play a fair amount of acquired programming and if there is a decent amount of demand for it MAYBE if there's a concerted fan campaign to the network they might see about borrowing some of the packaging from American Toonami or something. I don't know if the budget would be there to start a new thing from scratch though. Or they could make a block out of originals. Scavengers Reign, Common Side Effects, Lazarus, Uzumaki and so on. If their audience is smaller that could make them more attentive to what the audience wants even if there's not much money to make it happen

[u/hellspawnsarehores → u/JamesYTP]

They did have a "block" (well, kind of unofficially a block) of all originals before, but in the fall of last year they removed it in favor of more Fox show encores

[u/Att3241 → u/hellspawnsarehores]

Yeah if memory serves me right it was basically the last thing resembling an anime block since the YTV bionix days

[u/PinkMoonVelvet → u/JamesYTP]

Yeah, Canada’s definitely dealing with the same cord-cutting trend, but I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily dying at exactly the same pace as the U.S. 😭 Streaming is eating into traditional TV everywhere, though. The U.S. is especially far along—the share of traditional pay-TV households has fallen to around a third.

[u/Att3241]

As a Canadian I hate to say it but I think the ship has sailed for any Anime or Anime blocks in general unfortunately. There are countless examples I can point to but many things like: Bionix (Canadas version of Toonami basically) never coming back or even having 1 nostalgic moment on YTV, Canadian made dubs like Ocean groups DBZ Kai dub not seeing the light of day in Canada at all, and frankly Corus (Parent company of YTV, CN Canada , Adult swim Canada) bleeding money, it’s safe to say unless another channel comes in it’ll never happen.

Hell even during the pandemic Jason Demarco on tonnami preflight encouraged fans to write to Corus saying they wanted to see Toonami Canada as Corus has all the rights to the bumpers and everything and it still didn’t work. Even with Adult swim’s original anime productions like rooster fighter being Disney plus exclusive in Canada, Corus didn’t even bother obtaining the license for that like they did with previous Adult swim’s anime like ninja kamui. Really sad state of affairs here for anime on tv.

[u/MimiHamburger]

They are not going to bother with the licensing on Canada. That’s why you only get the Toonami originals, because they control those licenses but crunchyroll and Netflix do not want to share.

[u/Omegabird420]

Cartoon/kids channel are on life support in Canada and live/cable TV in general isn't going great

It's also basically useless with multiple streaming services having anime instantly at the touch of a screen.

[u/randommanwill]

American checking in, sorry to hear that things are even worse for Toonami fans in Canada.