Why should everyone learn Media Literacy? Media Literacy can help us understand how media messages shape our culture and society, recognize what the media maker wants us to believe or do, evaluate media messages based on our own experiences, skills, beliefs, and values, as well as create and distribute our own media messages. Most of the media today is owned by six major companies. They are General Electric, Walt Disney, News Corporation, Time Warner, Viacom, and CBS. Knowing this, I went to venture out and see if anime is owned by any of these companies. Trust me, they kinda are. FUNiMATION and Crunchyroll are the big two when it comes to anime. FUNiMATION has been around since I was born in ’94. I would watch all the anime I could get mainly on a television block between Cartoon Network and Adult Swim called Toonami. Without Toonami, I probably wouldn’t be that interested into anime at an early age. The media shaped me into becoming an animator and making me want to go to Japan by integrating into Japanese culture into my life. Toonami now targets towards the same audience they did when they were young, so pretty much my age and up. The anime does get more graphic and lewd as the hour rises, but still it is censored because Cartoon Network is owned by Time Warner. FUNiMATION is evolving by partnering with Crunchyroll for their streaming service. Toonami is still by far the greatest thing to ever come to existence, using mostly anime coming from FUNiMATION, but is flawed by media views. I’m sure if Time Warner doesn’t approve than it won’t be broadcasted on Toonami, or Cartoon Network for the most part. Crunchyroll on the other hand isn’t owned by any of these six major companies. They are strictly online streaming base through either their site or apps across all devices. It’s new to the media game as it was founded in 2006 by a group of University of California, Berkeley graduates. Crunchyroll's distribution channel and partnership program delivers content to over twenty million online community members worldwide. Crunchyroll is co-owned by Otter Media (a joint venture between AT&T and The Chernin Group) and TV Tokyo. The Chernin Group however is a fallen leaf from the News Corporation. Peter Chernin has control on the anime streaming business, heck all of streaming since he also owns Hulu. Who knows if there will be a monopoly in online streaming?
