@Ubiq:
So they yank the most popular series out of the magazine?
I'm not saying that they won't, just that it's a spectacularly bad idea for them to do such. Especially considering as how they have already announced plans to release such things as the unedited preview DVD later this year, which would mean that they are heavily promoting a series that does not appear in Shonen Jump anymore. They promote all of their products in ASJ, but nowhere near the extent that they're apparently gearing up to promote Naruto.
Leaving it in ASJ means that people buy the magazine for the latest chapters and buy the volumes when they're collected while taking it out means that ASJ is left without a heavy hitter for the first time ever. Dragon Ball Z left the magazine well after it had left it's peak of popularity, Yu-Gi-Oh has dropped off considerably since 2004. One Piece is middling popular, but nowhere near as much as these other shows were and are. Naruto is pretty much carrying the magazine right now.
Removing it Shonen Jump a B-List magazine in the minds of buyers, subscribers, and advertisers in a single stroke.
Again, I'm not saying that they won't do this, just that it's an awful, awful, awful, awful idea to yank a series out of the magazine at the height of it's popularity. It's bad for bookstand sales, it's bad for the subscribers who ordered it for Naruto, and it's bad for the advertising revenue. It's a fantastically bad idea.
Sorry, I've been away for a week so I've kinda forgotten how to phrase my wordings/ideas properly. Hold a moment…
I was told by my friend RedComet that he went to a convention and had a chat with Viz Representatives; they told him that Rurouni Kenshin would be getting virtually a monthly tankoban release because of the massive popularity of the Anime. Even though the Anime has ended, Kenshin has still managed to recieve high marks whenever a new tanko comes out. Perhaps not NYT or USA Today high, but still the cream of the crop for Viz.
If we consider Naruto to be water, and Viz's formatting (ASJ, Tankos) as a funnel, what Viz is doing is having Naruto go through the funnel at a controlled pace; it's reaping massive results. At the bottom of the funnel is a hungry mouth; it wants more water (great demand). Since that demand isn't likely to be satured anytime soon, widening the funnel's orifice potentially has more profit than simply having a constricted flow of water.
However, things could go both ways; Naruto's popularity isn't likely to change if dropped from ASJ or maintained, as indicated by the Kenshin incident. Furthermore, this shows that even if the Anime laps the manga, there shouldn't be any falls in manga sales (sorry if that didn't come out right earlier). Most likely, if Viz dropps Naruto from ASJ, all that will do is kill ASJ's poplarity, and possibly result in a drop of the magazine as a whole. Hence, this means Viz will be forced to have faster tanko releases of all the other component manga for the series.
@Ubiq:
The volumes won't catch up either. Volume 9, which, if I'm right, was released at the start of February ended with chapter 81. The next volume is what? Three months away? With that kind of release schedule, ASJ will have released 12 chapters or more, which gives them a slightly longer chapter lead on the volumes with each increasing volume. Naruto is almost always nine chapters to a volume isn't it?
Hold, let me check…
I can't say about the volume length, but keep in mind that Naruto only has one filler episode (this week's) in the Chuunin Exam, and since there are two manga chapters per episode (roughly) and four episodes per month, the Anime should catch up but not quite as quickly as I originally thought. I do not know how many chapters are released per ASJ, but you said four is unusual earlier so I am guessing three is about average. That's six per two months and sixteen manga chapters summarized in the same number of anime episodes, 16:6.
Sorry to communicate the wrong message, though; it doesn't look like lapping something as huge as Naruto will have much effect.
@Ubiq:
So people thought that Dragon Ball Z and Yu-Gi-Oh would start off weak in comparison to Bleach and Rurouni Kenshin?
No, DBZ and YGO already had massive popularity prior to the serial; putting them in ASJ was a good incentive to purchase the magazine, and as omae said long ago, keeping those titles in held the manga's popularity for a while. I'm saying putting OP into ASJ was because Viz might have thought it weak; looking at my old ASJ copy (#1), we had two Toriyama titles, YYH, YGO and One Piece. Since ASJ premiered in 2002, which is when I think Naruto started, Viz include OP in ASJ with the hope that it would escalate into something huge; I mean, it was surrounded by already popular titles, as well as Sandland by Toriyama; doesn't that mean Viz held it in some regard?
HNG, OP, YYH, YGO(?) and Naruto are all that are in the magazine now, right? Naruto's popularity is huge, as is YGO; they're pulling the slack for HNG, OP, and YYH. I say YYH as poor because Bleach is doing so well in comparison, despite not being serialized.
@Ubiq:
Because it didn't explode in popularity until the arrival of the dub?
It was fairly popular, but nowhere near what it was after the show popped up on Cartoon Network. A good dub helps the comic, but a bad one turns people off.
No, Naruto was massively popular before the serialization, too. Think about it this way; One Piece has one major English website, Arlong Park. Nauto has, in order on Google:
NarutoFan, Naruto Chuushin, NarutoKun, NarutoCentral.
Any one of those four are many times larger than Arlong Park. We're like Ireland in comparison to the United Kingdom, and that's not including the numbers of uncharted IRC highways.
This does bring up WHY Naruto WAS serialized, though; to maintain ASJ! Was DBZ dropped because it was waning in popularity, or because Naruto was strong enough to hold ASJ in normal sales and DBZ tankos were more profitable?
@Ubiq:
As I've pointed out before, this doesn't bother me in the least as I don't want One Piece taken out of ASJ. I love having Oda's artwork at a full page size as the volumes simply do not do it justice.
That's something I've actually never considered. I'll need to make a note of that for the future.