It's... Profitmon!

In TV land, prime viewers are fleeing prime time: The networks have seen a 7.4% drop in viewings by 18- to 49-year-olds so far this fall compared with last year. There are plenty of reasons for these declines-fickle tastes, videogames, piracy. But there's also the fact that, frankly, the entertainment industry tends not to show the fans much love. Any business that prices popcorn the way gas stations price gas, encodes software into its CDs that compromises computer security, or persists in building sitcoms around Jim Belushi needs work in staying close to customers.

Yet with anime and its print cousin-the paperback-sized cartoon books called manga-the otaku keep showing up, cash in hand. This tidy little corner of the show-biz universe-a market worth more than $625 million last year at retail in North America, of which AD Vision captured $150 million-makes for a rare example of an entertainment niche that does more than not alienate its customers: It has found ways to keep them buying and buying.

But as the majors take their first tentative steps, Ledford and his peers keep racing along. The most dramatic example of this attitude is their tolerance for folks who have the potential to put them out of business: pirates trading anime online. And not just trading, but competing to see who can create the best subtitled version of a particular show.

This is open-source TV programming. "Fansubbers," as they're called, can spend more than a dozen hours collectively just to get a half-hour show ready for English speakers. The process is as orderly as an ant farm, with each fansubber having a specialized task.

If this were being done in any other industry-imagine Chinese Pontiac fans getting together to strip and build their own versions of General Motors cars-the lawsuits would be piling up. Not here. Part of the reason is that the fansubbers police themselves with a zero-tolerance policy that would impress Eliot Spitzer.