This Wednesday, May 12, 2011 was the 1 year anniversary of Saban Brands regaining Power Rangers from Disney for over $48 million. In this post, I will describe the good and the bad of the re acquirement. This is a new blog series I like to call.......................
MOMENTS
IN
POWER RANGERS
HISTORY!
#1:
SABAN AND POWER RANGERS
Pics come from their respectful owners. :]
I:
THE NEWS BROKE OUT
In May 2010, Haim Saban, creator of the Power Rangers franchise introduced a new company called "Saban Brands" which would buy out properties that have out stood the test of time. Who knew what brand that this company would acquire first?
We didn't expect this now did we? It was announced 6 days later that the company had re acquired Power Rangers from Disney for $48 million. Disney wanted to get rid of it anyway so they said "AHH WHAT THE HECK, WE WILL GIVE TO THE OWNER WHO KNOWS WHAT POWER RANGERS IS". But what was promised out of this acquirement? First was a new season that would debut on Nickelodeon in 2011 while reruns of Mighty Morphin-RPM would debut on Nicktoons later that year. The news were booming everywhere! On blogs, message boards, newspapers, it was even the TOP STORY on Cynopsis Kids the next day! WOW! The next step of business was to promote the brand and bring it to new heights.
II:
PROMOTION
The original 5 Rangers appeared at the San Diego Comic Con and gave away free DVDs of the first episode with some information about reruns.
It was reveled that reruns would start on Nicktoons in October. The same month that Comic Con happened, it was announced that Marvista Entertainment would handle the rights to Power Rangers worldwide. The website was re launched and soon, a Twitter and Facebook page was created. Then October 2010 came and you would not believe what happened next.
III:
SHATTERED HOPES
AND MORE PROMOTION
Well, it's October, so where are the reruns? NOWHERE TO BE FOUND!!!!!!!! Nickelodeon decided to be stupid and just be lazy about it. Darn!!!! However, it was announced that the new season would be known as "Power Rangers Samurai"
Promoting this new generation of Power Rangers was a piece of cake. The 5 new Rangers appeared in Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and trailers of the show aired on Nick and kids are as hyped as heck!
Now let's see what happened when the show debuted.
IV:
SABAN + POWER RANGERS = COMEBACK!
On February 7th 2011, the new season debuted on Nickelodeon.....STARTING WITH THE THIRD EPISODE! THAT HAS NEVER BEEN DONE IN POWER RANGERS HISTORY!!!!! Oh well, the first two will air soon. There was some production issues with it but what the heck, you have to work with what you have. Anyway, the episode during it's premiere week got watched by 16.8 million
viewers. WOW! From that point, new episodes would debut on Sundays at noon. (Really?) This didn't work however as the Sunday premieres got only about 2 million per episode while the reruns on Saturdays got about 3 million per episode. After 3 months of good Saturday ratings, Nick decided to move new ones to Saturdays. And it worked! The episode "Unexpected Arrival" got a butt kickin 4.6 million viewers making the show it's current series' high. Now the show is currently the #1 kids action show in the USA and the ratings continue to grow. Talk about a comeback!
EPILOGUE:
WHAT'S NEXT?
The future is bright. The reruns of the 700 episodes will begin later this year on Nicktoons and the first two episodes will air soon. We were also promised a video game and MEGA Bloks toys in Spring 2012. (Late?) To tell you the truth, I like Samurai so far. It might be a carbon copy of Shinkenger, (I have not seen it, I hear of fans talk about it) but they are better written. The music is good, most of the plots are good and not as goofy, the acting is mixed (Like with every other PR season) and we have two PR veterans on the show. (Paul Schrier as "Uncle" Bulk and Rick Medina as Decker). Good job Saban. Keep up the good work.
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