But it's a big possiblity Naruto would end up like One Piece if it goes onto something like the foxbox...I can imagine crappy dubbing and totally changed dialouge and names...and if One Piece is poorly marketed, wouldn't be suprised if the same happened to Naruto, like I said One Piece is really big in Japan and has a lot of marketable items to go with it, but it ended up not doing well in the US..so exact same thing can happen to Naruto. And as for the reference to a card game, even though Naruto has one, it's not based on it...and Inuyasha had a card game too, which was released in US too.
I think even if it is a niche programming, AS gets really good ratings, from what I have read, and with the new programs it puts on, it gets even highter, so I don't see it being that bad if they put it on AS..I mean when you think about it Inuyasha will eventually end it's run on AS...would have to replace it...Naruto is another popular anime that could. (-_- though just dvd would be better).
Plus when you think about it, Naruto is a top selling manga in the US, so even if they were to air it on AS, people that read it and find out it was beng aired on there are likely to watch it on there, and of course, buy the DVDs.
And anyways, just because the anime is marketable, dosn't mean that it would in the US or would end up being a very big success. And I think the question of marketing the anime in terms of merchandice is going to highly depend on who liscences the anime.