[onoesworkacct]

How many customers watch each episode of popular shows? 100k+?

And we're talking a difference of ~7 hours of labor. $200 difference at most?

[bonecrusher2102]

I agree - this is the right take. Spend a little extra because your customers REALLY care.

[programjames]

I think the take is: If 100k people watch the episode, spending $200 more for higher quality subtitling comes out to... a whopping 0.2 cents per person (per episode). Let's just say that would cost an extra $1/month per person. Are they price sensitive enough that they won't go to a competitor that's a few dollars more expensive per month if it has better subtitles? I don't know, but maybe some manager believed they were, and thus it was worth it to make the subscription a little cheaper.

[subpariaH]

I just wish that there were versions of closed captioning that were fan-made and kept. There are movies that I watch over-and-over again that have bad subtitles, and I can do nothing about it. This is a travesty for the hearing-impaired, and the only good thing about it is that on occasion a film may have Easter eggs in their subtitles or things from the script that didn’t make it into production.

[kace91]

That person would need, besides basic computer fluency for the timestamps, knowledge of Japanese and English.

Not unheard of, but probably harder than hiring for a call center, and more need to prevent high rotation due to difficulty in finding replacements.

Edit: not that I disagree with your general idea, just pointing out potential issues.

[bonecrusher2102]

It’s cheaper than you might think. Much like in gaming, there’s a lot of people who really want to work in the anime industry, even if it’s just on the localization and distribution side. This drives down salaries quite a bit.

[throwaway92rw]

Wouldn't it be easier to just hire someone in Japan who knows English? Im sure they could find someone willing to work remotely.

[whywhywhywhy]

You’re not competing with them being unable to watch it either. You’re competing with someone doing a better job for free out of passion.

[SecretDreams]

While I agree, it's all a our whether they can pass the cost off to the customer. Customers will care a lot for food quality - will they tolerate a price increase to preserve sub quality or accept lower quality for the same sub price? Are there competitors?

These are the questions that would get played out in the decision process.

[lasc4r]

Reminds me of products on Amazon with little to know information about the product and photoshopped images. Somehow it was worth making, but selling? Who can be bothered.

[alwaysdoit]

TBF, for the more popular shows, they are spending that money on an English dub (which is considerably more expensive).

[DrewADesign]

This is really what’s driving business AI products’ push by fleece vest set, though: knowing that they can make enshitification just that much more attractive.

[elihu]

...and that's for an episode that probably cost the original studio at least a hundred thousand dollars to produce, maybe a lot more.