$26,500 (AUD) for Opportunity International Australia and was eventually Kobe's last Iron Chef event before his death. United States reception Starting around 1997, Iron Chef was shown, on KTSF in San Francisco, KSCI in Long Beach, as well as stations in Hawaii and the New York City area, in its original Japanese version with English subtitles, and quickly became a cult hit. In summer of 1998, the show stopped using subtitles; Fuji TV released a statement saying that the show was intended as a "service to the Japanese community abroad" and due to Japanese copyright laws were to be aired without subtitles, which had previously been provided "inadvertently." While always a success in Japan, Iron Chef became a surprise hit in the United States when it was picked up by the Food Network in 1999 and dubbed into English. Part of the U.S. appeal was due to the dubbing, which gave the show a campy charm that evoked English-dubbed Chinese kung fu movies of the 1970s. Audiences also found amusing some of the over-the-top culinary concoctions regularly featured on the show, eventually leading to a spoof on Saturday Night Live. International syndication The show was presented in the United States and Canada on the Food Network, dubbed and/or subtitled into English. It is also actively broadcast on SBS TV in Australia. In the case of SBS, this is unusual as the network has a policy favouring in-house subtitling. It may be felt that the tone given to the show by its American dub is essential to its charms, heightened perhaps by the fact that in most episodes, the flamboyant Chairman is subtitled instead of dubbed. However, episodes aired since February 2009 have seen the Chairman's voice dubbed rather than subtitled as was the case in previous airings, except when he sends the chefs into battle. The show was broadcast on the Finnish channel SubTV, and the Swedish channel TV400 (TV4). Iron Chef was also broadcast on Challenge in the UK in 2003 and 2004, as part of its "Japanese Christmas Cracker" and "Japanorama" strands. The show had again aired in the U.S. on the Fine Living Network from May 5, 2008, until the channel went off the air on May 30, 2010; however, the music from earlier broadcasts, taken from the film Backdraft, had been replaced due to music-licensing issues with NBC Universal. The Cooking Channel picked up the series