bergarass

[bergarass]

Watcher google drive

i think the title is pretty self explanitory

Only ghost files on it atm but Mystery Files and Puppet History are next. Watcher has back pedalled on deleteing all their free content to lock it behind a pay wall but y'know what? maybe I just dont want to give them ad revenue anymore, which is evil but screw them. Also they may still back pedal on their back pedalling, which is to many pedals anyways.

As an update, I ran out of storage :3

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genuinely cannot imagine dickriding the watcher guys the way some of you have been. like they made a bad business decision! they alienated their audience! they made jokes about "eating the rich" and then one of their owners turned around and bought a tesla! they said they'd pull all their old content off youtube and then immediately backpedaled and started gaslighting the people who noticed it! they're just guys on the internet, they're not your friends and they are not anti-capitalists. they just want money and they don't care about their primarily young/international/non-wealthy audience.

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“oh its all about paying artists until you have to foot the bill” actually it’s more about doing zero market research and jumping to an almost exclusively behind-a-paywall method of content creation. if they had announced that they were doing new series’ with a platform like nebula, that they would be doing kickstarters to fund shows a-la starkid, or that they would be adopting a world of wonder model where they release content 1-2 months early for paying subscribers (but it still eventually is posted for free), i don’t think the backlash would be this severe.

of course creatives deserve to be fairly compensated, and i empathize (as a creative working two jobs to make ends meet) with El Capitalismo ruining everything. but instead of figuring out what their audience wants and trying to prioritize that, they keep trying to ball on a buzzfeed budget despite the fact that leaving buzzfeed for creative freedom means giving up some of the luxuries (cough cough Steven Lim’s Fucking Gold Leaf).

tldr i sympathize deeply with watcher not wanting to lay off employees or sacrifice the “tv level quality” they’ve been trying to uphold. however. they never stopped to consider that most of their fanbase fell in love with their content when they made most of their videos in a basement at buzzfeed with a static camera, and don’t want to (or straight up can’t) foot the bill for expenses that they don’t even really care about.

[bergarass]

[bergarass]

Watcher seem to be making every single pitfall you can when establishing a new business from scratch

1. Someone already said this LA is like the worst place so start up a new business with limited funds. The cost of living, rent, and literally everything is too expensive to be sustainable without quick profit and growth.

2. They expanded far too quickly. The amount of employees and salaries for a company of their age and size is just not going to work.

3. Their content should not have had the apparently massive budget if they knew it was a financial risk with a large probability of not producing enough profit to offset the cost.

4. If they want to be like a tv network so bad they should’ve tired to create trial (CHEAP) shows with new personalities and talents to test the waters. Like actual TV networks (used to) do. Not some of their most expensive shows that have flop everytime they’ve tried to launch it.

5. MARKET RESEARCH!! Market research is the best friend to anyone trying to grow an audience. Feedback from a third party is so important when your job depends on a third party like this

6. TV Networks and streaming services depend on the casual viewer which are way easier to get on a well known platform.

7. Streaming services make booty trash money it’s a horrible business model.

I know everyone rags on business majors but has anyone at Watcher even like ever seen like a spread sheet?

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people keep comparing the WatcherTV move to Dropout (for obvious reasons) but I cannot emphasize enough how vastly different the circumstances between the companies is. like astronomically different

• Watcher does not have the years of experience that Dropout/CollegeHumor did. CH as a company formed in 1999. They've been doing sketch comedy since the early 2000s. they were a company, like an actual company with offices and departments and everything. Watcher hasn't even existed for 5 years

• Because CH has been established for that long, not only do they have an established connection to the industry, but they have an established fan base already. People that knew about and were fans of CH for over a decade, before Dropout was even a thought in someone's head.

• When Dropout was in its infancy, CH was still under their parent company IAC, they weren't roughing it completely on their own the way that Watcher is. They were later dropped by IAC, but having that connection and funding in the vulnerable start was important

• CH was still posting sketches and skits on YouTube for free while filling out Dropout's catalog. They didn't hard shift into exclusively subscription based, they continued doing both for the first couple years in order to help get Dropout established. Even now, they still occasionally post full episodes for free on YouTube, including whole seasons of Dimension 20

• They have a large rotating cast that they move between multiple shows. They have a variety of content and a variety of entertainers to be guests on shows. Watcher has 3 guys which the occasional guest

• A big part of this transition is because Watcher's episodes have a high production cost. That's what they claim. That it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to film one episode of Ghost Files. but why?? why does it cost that much?? I get cost of travel for talent and crew but hundreds of thousands of dollars per episode?

• When IAC dropped CH and they went bankrupt in 2020, they only had 7 employees. When Sam Reich bought the company, they only had 7 employees. not twenty five. I'm not advocating for laying off people, but maybe they shouldn't be payrolling more people than they can afford

• also. Sam Reich is very vocal about how Dropout surviving and succeeding was nothing short of a miracle. They didn't get that success because the business model works, they got that success from years of networking, hard work, and pure luck

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Am I happy Watcher rolled back their plan and apologized? Yes. Have I still lost any desire to watch their videos? Yes. Do I think people are being too harsh towards Steven, singling him out and such? Yes. Do I think Steven and Andrew bringing back worth it in the middle of a global cost of living crisis is extremely out of touch? Yes.

All of these things can coexist. Feelings towards the situation can be complex. It happens.

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“well, maybe shane was outvoted” “this is steven’s fault” “i think ryan-” these are all grown men with dick and balls

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this is such a fuckass way to defend a fuckass business model

We’re Leaving YouTube

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As a casual fan of Watcher and avid fan of train wrecks I am having a wonderful time right now

[bergarass]

I'm sorry to everyone who follows me for other shit but I'm going to keep posting about the Watcher situation because marketing fascinates me. I find advertising to be sickening and exploitive, but marketing as a concept is fascinating.

I'm just majorly wondering what the FUCK is going on at Watcher HQ right now. It's still relatively early on the West Coast (almost 8 am at the time I am writing this) but their lack of response is throwing up a lot of interesting markers to me (not necessarily red flags but flags all the same.)

The immediate pull back on response speaks that they knew what they were doing in terms of PR at least initially. They had their employees delete any interactions with dissenting fans, there was radio silence except for clarification on what will remain on the Youtube. Their only mistake was making that Patreon announcement with sneak peaks for the site (I can only guess they were banking that the Patrons were most likely to follow them in the move and sorely miscalculated it). Steven's post was... problematic. But he posted it before all of the backlash started so while it didn't help it wasn't a doubling down when faced with a lot of backlash.

While saving face is almost always a smart thing to do, this silence has gone on a little bit too long. They have lost tens of thousands of Subscribers in 24 hours. Their announcement video has over a 1:4 Like/Dislike ratio. Fans are talking and starting to spin the situation in ways that are actively detrimental to the company. It should be top priority to get a response out. This is crisis mode y'all. They had all day to secure a PR representative if they didn't already have one to try and salvage this and yet? Still more radio silence from the official channel.

That creates the question: are we going to see a response today or have they chosen to wait until the traditional work-week starts again? I can't help but think that waiting is a terrible idea. The fanbase is getting out of hand. They need to salvage what they can and letting the situation fester isn't going to help. Or, the even worse option is that they are going to continue like this isn't happening, which is an EVEN WORSE idea.

Whatever happens I'm watching with a perverse fascination. Its been a long time since I've seen a media blunder like this.

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"Steven isn't solely responsible for the paywall shift" and "Nobody wants to watch Steven eat insanely expensive food and have to pay for it" are statements that can coexist btw.

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i lied abt only posting abt this situation once, i just saw this lovely person’s comment!! passing it on to tumblr 🫡

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OMFG THIS COMMENT. GUISE. THAT LAST SENTENCE IS SO FUCKING RAW

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this comment section is brutal 😭😭

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every february i think of ryan bergara ONLY

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just two ghoul friends having a good time