Basically, what's adding up to me on the September 2006 controversial recasting decision is this:What did Rachel say?
- TPCi decided to take the dub in house from 4Kids not in the way FUNimation did with One Piece, but in the way they did with Dragonball Z, to cut costs on the production as the popularity of the Series was not as high as it was at its peak (the ratings only fall with each Series and popularity, much in Japan). As a result, their old buddies at TAJ with whom 4Kids had cut ties with in late Johto beginning with "Address Unown" in the dub when they took all the Movies/Pikachu Shorts/Anime in house dubbed for the rest of 4Kids' tenure with Pokemon, were selected as they could produce the dub cheaper and at a lower cost-effective rate. However, arguably the scummiest decision of them all even compared to FUNi w/Z as Barry Watson legitimately couldn't afford to make flights over to Canada then, as the 4Kids' VAs worked in New York just like TAJ's. What Armen & Larry decided to do w/PUSA's blessings in Season 9 permanently changed the dub's main VA cast (after Tom Wayland, I think those 2 are who I have the lowest opinion of who worked on this franchise, personally), period.
- Then, they aired MoMP as a trial run on Kids' WB, and most people hated it, even those that weren't fond of the old VA cast admitted this was largely worse.
- Then, Kids' WB dropped Pokemon from the line up as they had a good working relationship with 4Kids' in keeping Pokemon's dub the highest rated Series on the bloc for all 8 years it was on local TV in the United States, and wanted to shift away from Anime in general there (their biggest mistake, much like 4Kids, was not fighting hard to keep things going the way they were IMHO).
- Then we got "he said, she said" from both VA casts, but basically, Lawrence Neves was damage controlling on pokemon.com at the backlash with garbage that MoMP was well received. Stuart Zagnit confirmed that yes, there were non compete clauses in the contracts, but what Taylor/Stuart/Lillis said was also true that they were breakable and that no one had even afforded them the opportunity- even asked or gave a chance to the main cast members or the writing staff BUT JCC- whether they wanted to break contract and move to the TAJ studios to dub the Series. They were very breakable, and TAJ decided to only give the chance to Kayzie Rogers & James Cathcart via nepotism basically then, which they took and also still tried to work with 4Kids' dubs after the fact for a bit- but 4Kids found out, then blacklisted them for trying to have their cake & eat it both ways basically (David Lapkin managed to sneak over and do this successfully in S10 but wasn't caught, he was the DP Magikarp Salesman not Bill Rogers as was revealed recently). To add more to this, it seems the TPCi VAs thought the 4Kids VAs left voluntarily at the time of those auditions as PUSA/TPCi had not told them this was to reduce costs with lower budget/cheaper VA & writer talent, Bill Rogers confirmed that he didn't know what was going on then exactly but was told that Eric Stuart had voluntarily left the show (which wasn't the case).
That's basically the truth on that dark period in the dub's history. Re: Loeffler, PokePress should be able to explain what happened in 2013, as he's Interviewed Loeffler before back in Rival Destinies- hope he does, would love to know how we got Goldfarb instead of him in charge from XY onward so far.
