My Anime or may not return to its glory days . . .

I remember being 10 years old and waking up to watch Dragon Ball early in the morning before all the other cartoons came on . . . years before Cartoon Network would turn it into the American fad that it became. I remember Gundam and Vultron right along side my He-Man, Thundercats and Transformers. My little sisters watched Sailor Moon and you know what . . . I watched it to. Why did Anime fall by the wayside? was the popularity in America to much for the medium to keep up with with licencing fee's and dubbing costs? are American Anime fans so fickle, that they just move on to the next popular thing when they don't get / would rather pirate what they want? or has the quality of Anime really declined in the last decade?

I am a die hard Anime loyalist. I pop Ghost in the shell (the original) or Akira in my Xbox every few months. so why do i find it hard to find any good Anime? and why am i not the only one. in the past 5 years I've found about 5 or 6 good Anime films or series. Does America need to step up and do its own conversion of Japanese material the way that GONZO did Afro Samurai? Idk, I just don't want to see one of my favorite mediums die in obscurity.