I believe people in this thread provided already more than enough evidence how older voice actors were at that time popular and widely accepted among audience growing used to them. If older voice actors weren't popular there wouldn't be lifted so much dust after dub change in first place. If i recall right even in interview with ex director mr. Hidaka when he heard about voice change was rather concerned viewing it as bad thing.
Amount of complaining, criticism and backlash change caused back in day only further proves how this wasn't accepted well among fandom. If your looking for evidence, im sure you will get full picture in things by reading archives threads at that time, older petitions etc.
Yawn, well accepted in the fandom. Last I checked, it's a small sect of people. They either still care, stopped watching, or continue to watch. Notice how those petitions have stopped for the most part? It's because no one cares. It's a fringe group. The older fans have gotten over it for the most part. The younger fans don't seem to care much. Also, unpopular with the internet kids doesn't mean unpopular in general. Unless you're willing to fool yourself about that. Listen, I know you win your arguments by boring people to death with irrelevant evidence and regurgitated statements but I'll go through with it this time to educate you.
It drop in ratings which happened at that time and backlash in fandom isn't good enough as proof to support assertion how change of VA's contributed to drop if ratings looking for perceivable, rigid evidence than im afraid you cannot provide such type of evidence from your side either bringing us in stalemate position creating fallacy "Argument from silence".
A drop in ratings from what? You're misusing evidence for your own argument. The ratings have and always had fallen since the beginning. You're "backlash in fandom" is a backlash from people who were outside of the target demographic and had no effect on the ratings. In fact, when Pokemon moved to Cartoon Network, it actually helped the block increase in ratings.
It was actually doing pretty damn well for itself. Notice how one of the posters mention, and I quote: "4.5-5.0 would be great, but a huge reach at this point in Pokémon's life. I think CN will be happy if it can at least match Ben 10 and average a 3.0. That's a reasonable asking point,
given at the start of last season, Pokémon averaged a 3.5. That's even though it'll finish it's run on Kids' WB having averaged only half that since about April."
It's ratings were decreasing even before the change. Can you believe that? Decreasing before the change. So any decrease that you point had already been happening before then. Notice the 3's? Look at April ratings for Pokemon before the switch:
March 25 - WB (Kids' WB!) 1.8/8 Avg. (8a-12N)
Pillow Head1 0.7/6; Pillow Head2 1.7/9; Viewtiful Joe 1.8/8; The Batman 2.0/8; Xiaolin Showdown 2.1/8; Loonatics 1.9/7;
Pokemon 2.1/9; Pokemon 2.3/10; JammX Kids (1hr) 0.9/4
[10:30 am Pokemon was #1 (tied) in the demo against broadcast.]
April 1 - WB (Kids' WB!) 1.6/7 Avg. (8a-12N)
Pillow Head1 0.6/4; Pillow Head2 1.3/7; Viewtiful Joe 1.5/7; The Batman 1.5/7; Xiaolin Showdown 2.0/9; Xiaolin Showdown 2.2/9;
Pokemon 1.9/8; Pokemon 2.0/9; Johnny Test 1.6/7; Yu-Gi-Oh! 1.4/7
[9:30 am Xiaolin Showdown was #1 (tied) in the demo against broadcast.]
April 8 - WB (Kids' WB!) 1.8/8 Avg. (8a-12N)
Pillow Head1 0.9/9; Pillow Head2 1.4/10; Viewtiful Joe 2.1/10; The Batman 1.9/8; Xiaolin Showdown 2.5/10; Xiaolin Showdown 1.9/8;
Pokemon 1.9/8; Pokemon 2.0/8; Johnny Test 1.7/7; Yu-Gi-Oh! 1.5/7
[9:00 am Xiaolin Showdown was #1 in the demo among broadcast.]
April 15 - WB (Kids' WB!) 1.5/8Avg. (8a-12N)
Pillow Head1 0.4/4; Pillow Head2 0.6/5; Viewtiful Joe 1.1/6; The Batman 1.1/5; Xiaolin Showdown 1.4/6; Xiaolin Showdown 1.7/8;
Pokemon 2.0/10; Pokemon 2.4/11; Johnny Test 1.9/10; Yu-Gi-Oh! 2.0/11
[10:30 am Pokemon was #1 in the demo among broadcast.]
I think the general rule of thumb is add 1.0 to broadcast networks in comparison to cable or something? Looks around the same to me if we do. Looks like an increase if we don't.
Also comparing ratings between Kanto, OI and Johto is irrelevant to discussion because we are discussing if dub voice changing caused drop in ratings, which happened in middle of AG series. But if you insist there wasn't any notable decline in ratings until 2001/2002.
Then why point out Best Wishes?
Maybe so, but they are reflection of how viewers feel about current show with increase or decrease serving as indication if certain change was accepted well or not.
And what they feel about a show doesn't point out what they specifically don't like.
When you see ratings experiencing sudden, rather than gradual drop during certain period of TV show more likely than not is direct causation from some of decisions which happened at that time.
They were decreasing beforehand.
Let say kids who were in target audience in AG started watching show at end of Johto, start of AG. By time dub voicing changed they would already follow anime with older VA's for good 3 to 4 years.
Its not farfetched to presume how some of them wouldn't respond positively to sudden change of character voices being already used to original VA's turning them away from anime starting to lose interest. Judging by frequency of statements you could encounter afterwards with many people repeating same thing "i quit after dub change only further adds to that".
We're done. No need to continue. Do notice how you're the only one still arguing the point though. Everyone has agreed that there are no facts to back up the assertion that the VA change did anything.
