The Fox Network will end its daily animation programming by the end of the year. Citing a decline in sales of advertising, reflecting the declining economy, the Fox Network has basically ceded the afternoon animation time slots back to its affiliates. It is possible that some local stations will continue to run syndicated animation programs aimed at young viewers during that time period, but it is also possible that some stations may take the easy way out and just show infomercials.
The two anime series that will suffer a significant loss of exposure due to this change are Digimon and Transformers. Both of these series are currently part of the Fox Saturday morning lineup, so they won't disappear, but their exposure will be down significantly. The Transformers in particular could be hurt since this series has recently made a major comeback on American TV. With a series of graphic novel collections from Titan Books (see 'Titan Takes Transformers Trades'), a new line of toys from Hasbro (see 'Hasbro Q3 Surprisingly Strong'), as well as DVD collections from Rhino (see 'There's Gold in Them Thar Old Cartoons'), the Transformers is the property where a loss of visibility could hurt pop culture retailers the most.
