Perhaps my knowlege is flawed. How many people watch what is considered a 'hit' anime show every week?
I haven't watched anime for a long time so I can't answer that. Most of what I have learnt has come from talking to English students, young and old over the years.
Apart from school / young kids I've just found adults have little interest in anime (naturally, although reading manga is a different story) unless they are geeks, so it's no different from the western world. Anime like sazae-san and chibi maruko-chan take up popular time slots (Sunday - around 6pm) and have done so for a long time. Pokemon / Naruto and all other anime have their own channel and sometimes I flick by that channel but mostly never recognise what anime they are showing.
Oh, I forgot to mention studio Miyazaki films, most people are familiar with and have watched these films too.
Here's a quote that I agree with 100%:
"Actually, I think Vanye's point was a bit different from your reading of it. He was saying that, unless you're a kid, anime is not naturally common in Japan, though it's probably more common there than American animation is here in the United States. While manga is ubiquitous, anime is still considered for kids and younger teens by most Japanese people, and if an adult in his twenties said to other adults "I'm a big fan of anime" I think people would look at that person funny, supposing he might even be an "otaku" (used here in the stereotypical negative sense, as opposed to the idealistic positive sense). Publicly expressing one's like of anime in Japan is less like a Japanese adult in America saying "I'm a fan of American sitcoms" and more like him/her saying "I'm a big fan of Tom and Jerry".
In Japan, saying that you liked a few anime shows when you were younger is not so conspicuous. Saying that you enjoyed the latest Ghibli feature is okay, too--roughly equivalent to saying you enjoyed watching the latest Disney animated film. Saying that you just bought the deluxe DVD boxset of Lain will possibly earn you a reputation as being obsessed and possibly antisocial. -_-"