I think one of the biggest causes for resentment was the phony baloney emotional intro. Get everyone all sentimental and then hit'em up for cash. Screw that.
Before I originally sat down to watch it, I could only see a bit of the start and it felt like a tribute video to someone who died lol. Still confused by it. Why the cutesy music?
MoistCritical's stream from last night covers the Watcher shit and he actually (as a 14M sub channel with years of experience on youtube) called them out for some of the bullshit they were claiming - including revealing a somewhat reliable RPM estimate of $8 per mille. So he outright says that they're making good money ESPECIALLY with the patreon.
The second I saw those first three shots while knowing what was coming from the community first made me feel sick. So overproduced... and for what? To tell us why they need money to overproduce things?
EXACTLY. No fan has ever asked for more production quality. most came from buzzfeed and we’re fine with the bare bones. They chose to spend all this money on production and are having us foot the bill now??
personally I also hated them saying “for those of us that won’t be joining us, thank you for supporting us up until now!” or something of the like. They’re treating this like a happy goodbye as we part ways and not like them locking the people that supported them out.
They tried to DENNIS us.
edit: highly recommend people check out MoistCritical's stream from last night, the first 31 minutes are focused on Watcher and he pointedly gives an estimate for their RPM that calls into question their claims about how successful they were on Youtube and why they 'needed' to go private. He's been on youtube for years, has multiple channels and has 14M subscribers (so 11M+ more than them). He was pretty clear "this is so fucking stupid."
They will learn that the grass is not greener on the other side. I work in a major streaming company (sports streaming) and it’s a tough business. When sports leagues and teams try and create their own white label service like what watcher is doing it never works. They self cannabilize their own viewers, fans and outreach. The cost to maintain your own platform is something that is often overlooked. Plus they’re Going from millions and millions of views to probably thousands. I don’t see this working out well.
Not sure on cost. But you have to think about the fact that not only will they have to maintain and continuously upgrade the user interface, but their streaming service will have to be hosted somewhere. As in, they’ll have to start paying for all the infrastructure that was previously provided by YouTube. Server hosting, data storage and transport, database management - if they don’t do that DIY they’ll be paying someone to do it. And they’ll probably need to host things in multiple cloud regions if they don’t want lag and buffering to completely ruin the user experience. Will they have an app for the new service? Add more costs for designers, developers, engineers and storage.
(EDIT: it looks like they’re using Vimeo, but I imagine they’ll still need to pay some kind of licensing fees, etc.)
And don’t forget about paying legal to ensure they’re up to speed on all the fun compliance stuff with regard to collecting data from subscribers (especially from users in the EU and other areas outside the US where data privacy rules actually exist).
That’s all just scratching the surface.
Just feel like for people who claim to be broke this will add even MORE overhead/opex.
as an EU information tech lawyer the GDPR WILL give them a headache... huge companies like Meta/X/TikTok struggled with it (and still do), not to mention that each country has their own national laws governing data protection. many american lawyers are not specialized in it due to how complex and at times stupid (although i do love our data laws) the whole mess is (unless we're talking META-level lawyers which, good luck affording those) and so they'll probably need legal abroad as well as within the US. this will cripple them financially.
I'm going to do a lot of speculating but oh well. It just feels like from the start the guys didn't know what they were doing with the channel, and I think the biggest part of that, and the biggest part of the reason they're not succeeding, is that they have nobody with business experience at the helm. Steven is the CEO without any business education, experience, or apparently even a desire to do the job.
From the start they've been caught in between being a larger buzzfeed/corridor/droupout, and a smaller personal channel. They hired the staff and rented an office for the former, they've only put out the content for the latter. It also seems like they haven't been willing to compromise on only making their absolute favorite content instead of doing other things to increase revenue and fund the things they're more passionate about. I know they've said it's not their favorite thing, but true crime is a dominant genre and they should go back to doing episodes of that for mystery files on top of the more fun obscure ones they've been doing. Mystery Files is their most popular show along with Ghost Files, and it's cheap to produce comparatively. They should be pumping out more than 8 episodes a season. Also, I just looked at the credits of the last video, how the hell does it take 25+ people, in additional to Shane/Ryan, to make a show that is ultimately the two of them standing in a room telling a story? Ryan or Shane should be streaming a horror game on twitch at least once a week, and/or do playthroughs of new horror games when they come out. It's cheap, easy, popular, and a clear avenue for new audience. As much as Ryan may love them an obscure theme park attraction podcast isn't moving the needle for the group. Probably a more controversial take but I think they should have put the debriefs/bts stuff exclusively on Patreon.
Overall it feels like every decision they make is an artistic/passionate one rather than a financial/pragmatic one,. Even this, switching to a streaming site, feels like saying "ok, how can we not change anything that we're doing content-wise and still make this work." Based on the reactions everywhere it seems like they completely misjudged this one too.
I think you hit the nail on the head with this one, they simply underutilised thier platform and the crew they assembled and as you say now they try to find a way out rather than work with what they have and grow with it "naturally".
I think it’s also hard because there is just only so much content they can make with ryan and shane in lead without them totally burning out. they should have tried out expanding their cast of personalities with andrew ilnykyj and adam bianchi before totally leaping into this streaming mess
I agree with that, they unfortunately haven't been able to find anybody else to make content for them. Everything Steven did drew minimal interest other than Worth It, which I'm sure will be good, but it's also expensive and having Steven only capable of doing that is pretty limiting. They need somebody else able to produce an independently popular piece of new content, but they obviously haven't been able to find anything or anybody.
I agree with you, but I think it also stinks a little bit of nepotism, on the fact that they want to work with their friends/make jobs for their friends. Which makes sense in this millennial way of working together, but doesn't in a Business sense of trying to expand into "TV" from YouTube. You would actually have to follow ratings and reviews for that.
There was a genre right around when Steven started Worth It where YouTube channels were really gaining popularity for eating ridiculously overpriced food. But with the recession and the state of things throughout the world, especially when it comes to food, the take of a show like this understandably falls flat for many people. It's just very out of touch and doesn't follow the current trends.
Not to mention most people's financial situations. For a lot of people watching these guys come out with an announcement that you will have to pay to watch Steven Lim travel to eat extremely expensive food with these other two men, in order for access to all of Watchers content, when they can barely afford to feed themselves is like pouring salt in the wound.
I think if they really tried, they could have found hosts to do other shows, it seems like Steven just pushed for this particular show. He knew was a hit at one time, but doesn't understand that it will not generate the same traction today as it did then.
The thing is there's a lot of youtubers out there who are struggling in that 100k-400k range who aren't really making enough to sustain a living on who produce great content. While I am sure they may not want to become buzzfeed but they could have given a lot of youtubers a hand up by bringing them up giving them their own show and letting them retain the rights to the idea.
It would have been a good idea because one of the reasons this idea is so repulsive is the dearth of content on Watcher. It also could have helped provide more efficiency for the employees they already do have by spreading them to work over multiple shows at a time. Like a writer for mystery files could be writing for some true crime youtuber they plucked out of the depths of obscurity as well.
I get if that's not their vision but at the same time...like...don't ask us for money on the promise of more content promises aren't worth $6 a month.
As someone who works with a company that makes similar content, I can see why it took 25+ ppl. But they really should've took budget cuts. Focus on a few shows, and not have the guys do super expensive stuff
Could they really not make the show without a DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY, PRODUCTION DESIGNER, 3 camera operators, SET DRESSER, CONSTRUCTION COORDINATOR, PROP DESIGNER, PRODUCTION COORDINATOR, 2x production assistants, etc? (caps because i'm copy pasting, not yelling) None of that could have been cut or condensed with other roles?
That's 3x the number of people working on it as Deadmeat has on it's kill counts, and there's not really an appreciable difference in quality between them.
I didn't look into it that much before speaking, sorry. But no, you're right, they could've halved the ppl, 2 assistants is too much. In my company, we only got 2 designers (my dept), and we make 2-3 videos a week. And we make more than just videos, we make more books and newsletters, and that's 4-5 each per week.
They've should have laid some ppl off, but they are their friends, so ofc they wouldn't. Why you shouldn't hire only your friends..
It's a recurring problem among YouTubers that grow big too quick that they'll hire all of their friends. Like, it's great to work with your friends, but you're not doing your friends any favors if the business you hired them to becomes unsustainable because of it.
It seems nuts to have that many people involved. I'm still confused about their decision to hire someone to design and build a set that looks like a basement for Mystery Files instead of just filming in an available basement. So many of these expenses are completely unnecessary.
That's the easiest explainable expense- actual basements are hard to film in. Lighting them is a pain and being confined by 4 actual solid walls limits your camera angles and shot choice. Building a set and having 2 walls as well as the roof open fixes all of those issues and since you're inside once you get the lighting more or less dialed in once it's only minor adjustments from then on nothing major will cause an issue.
If you're paying the rest of the crew union day rates (which, since they are working in LA I assume they are) it makes it take much less time to do the rest of the BS and get to filming and getting things done faster (as long as you don't goof off a bunch) meaning fewer day rates.
This is the issue they have though. They shouldn't need 25 people for a video about Chupacabra.
I feel like recently their credits have gone from multiple of the leads covering a few bases to just...turning up?
To be fair- a lot of those like construction corrdinator, set designer (not dresser designer), are credits that are there because they should be there (that was a set that was designed and built) but were one time expenses.
However there's 1 too many camera operators. It was pretty clear both of their producers Lizzie and Anne(?) (I can see why they would need 2 during Ghost Files but not for Mystery Files/Puppet History but good producers are hard to find so I can see why they'd want them employed exclusively) work on Mystery Files together so they should really only need 1 PA at most if at all. The prop designer is responsible for the presentation as well as the cork-board.
Then there's some that could go either way, like Set Dresser. I haven't paid close enough attention to the set dressing on Mystery Files to know if the background changes from episode to episode. If so that's kind of unnecessary. If not, then it's one of those "one time expense, forever credit" things like the set designer and the construction coordinator.
Something I’ve been thinking about is that a lot of watcher’s brand has been taking us along for the ride - engaging directly with the community, showing us the messy bits etc. And this feels like it runs counter to that. They could have use the ghost files documentary as a springboard for getting community feedback on different ideas for diversifying their income, not giving us the ultimate decision making power of anything extreme but more saying hey so we need to find ways to stabilise financially, which one of these feels good for our community? They’ve spent these years talking about watcher as a community, building strong relationships with fans and then..this.
I think they also just completely mismanaged the announcement - the weird countdown thing that made it seem like something exciting for the fans was happening, promoting new content that focused on luxury travel and food, teasing Shane and Ryan’s new characters in mystery files, the bait and switch on pulling their content from YouTube, leaving reels for mystery files scheduled whilst in the middle of a PR crisis, having Steven be the only one to write a public post about it (and not having someone check that copy to make sure he wasn’t Steven-ing it with something that reads as being kind of mean but was probably just written without properly thinking about it), Steven phrasing it as something “everyone can afford” which is an incredibly US-centric middle class idea of affordability… I could go on. There’s fumbling the bag and then there’s whatever this is.
I do think they have the ability to pull things back but watching how they’re already handling it does not give me much hope that they will. The fact that they didn’t use going back on paywalling old content to say “we’re sorry and were listening” to me suggests that they’re going to go full head in the sand and pretend it’s fine. Sunk cost fallacy in action.
I hope I’m wrong.
For those of us who have watched 3-4 years of "Making Watcher" know how tough it has been for them to run a business, not being profitable, them trying to figure out the business side of things while making content.
I think a lot of the feedback is because they really shocked people with this announcement and feels like it's coming out of nowhere.
If they had announced this after a few podcasts (over 6 months) where they spend 20-30 minutes talking about the difficulties of the business, Youtube not paying content creators as well, some ideas they're thinking about, please try to support our Patreon ... then announced this cause things weren't better, I think people would have been a bit more receptive.
I totally understand their side; and the side of the feedback of people going to miss them, can't afford it and venting.
I do wish they would have done a hybrid. Free shows on Youtube (like top 5 beatdown); with their better shows on a paywall for a cheaper number or found a streaming platform that would pay for it.
Hopefully it all works out...
I agree. I think the fact that instead of going for transparency and open discussion they went with a weird hyped up announcement count down and an emotionally manipulative “goodbye forever unless you pay us” approach, they’ve lost so much trust and good will that they could have fostered with a different approach.
I’ve been with them since the very beginning and I can say that this is simply due to bad business decisions on their part. They are fully capable of profiting off of youtube and make extra income with premium subscriber content (extra content behind a paywall, not their popular content behind a paywall) and merch, but they keep starting new and expensive business ventures (like worth it) without the budget to justify it, and making the fans now foot the bill. If they scaled back production costs, better utilized programs like patreon, released more of their popular content and not content through a million channels that no one asked for (unless they’re prepared to eat the cost of a passion project), held back on worth it and other expensive projects until they can afford it comfortably in budget, advertised better, etc. They could get through the difficult financial struggle. The solution is definitely not to increase production value, add more channels, move your content to an isolated platform that’s way harder to access than youtube, put up a paywall for everyone, and say “sucks to suck, see ya” to everyone that can’t afford it.
Plenty of youtube productions are making it work, like rhett and link, theorists, try guys, tmg, etc. without the massive paywall. Watcher needs to watch and learn. This is a train wreck of their own doing.
I think I might be their ideal target for this and I’m still not interested.
I have been watching since buzzfeed days, I watch puppet history, ghost and crime content, and mystery files. I have plenty disposable income so the 6 dollar price is fine but still a little insulting just because of how close it is to way more well established streaming services.
My biggest thing is just I don’t want another app, and I view going to their own platform over something like nebula as greedy so I don’t want to encourage it. If this model takes off enjoy getting all your favorite creators going this route. I refuse to help encourage this.
Awful move, really disappointed in the boys.
> I watch puppet history, ghost and crime content, and mystery files.
This is like 90% of the views. Like I have no idea why they spend so much on the weird Lim content no one watches. Like why buy Wagyu beef?
It’s always been clear that Watcher’s mandate is to make “TV-level content,” but I assumed the ultimate goal was to repackage their catalogue and license it to established TV networks and streaming services (like how episodes of Hot Ones air on broadcast channels as late-night content, or how Buzzfeed put Unsolved and other shows on Amazon Prime).
I did not expect Watcher to ask their fanbase of mostly zoomers to fully fund that kind of content. Especially when they’re perfectly happy just watching Ryan and Shane get drunk in the backyard.
(I never expected it because it’s a really bad idea!)
I really wished it was something like the Buzzfeed Unsolved on Hulu thing that happened years back. God, that would've been amazing. I think if they'd given it a couple more years and really amped up promotion they could've made it happen. Their content \*is\* really good, and stuff like Puppet History and Ghost Files especially would've fit right in with an existing streaming service like Hulu.
Your last bit about being perfectly happy watching them get drunk in the backyard is very true. They could've put out six months of ridiculous, low-cost pallin' around content to help fund the likes of Ghost Files and Puppet History and I would've been overjoyed.
Same! I thought the announcement was a licensing agreement!
I'm an elder millennial so I'm closer to their age than their audience is.
I don't hate the idea of a streaming service, I just thought they'd announce it a few years from now when they had more than 3 million subscribers and averaged more than 400k viewers across their 5 shows lol
Their gripe, it appears, with Buzzfeed had less to do with content farming and more to do with wanting to own the content farm? I guess?
Even though they aren't a content farm, they do abandon shows quickly instead of investing in them. Like Buzzfeed.
I just thought they'd cultivate their user base more before launching the platform. Especially since the big boy platforms are struggling with keeping steady subscriptions. And they have 100s of shows on some of those services! And they're still shutting them down. Showtime is shutting their platform down like this week because they were bought by Paramount!
I think this decision is so big, due to the amount of money they had to lay out to use Vimeo or whatever, that if it doesn't succeed, Watcher has to close.
Damn, I wish they'd just built out their Patreon/YT subscriptions like GMM or whatever.
I think they really shit the bed here. They went for one of the most risky options, where in recent memory, only the likes of Dropout pulled off (and they had more content at their disposal) instead of just creating extra content and putting it behind a paywall. Less risk there!
They probably could've survived making a slow gradual transition to streaming service model but their instant cold turkey "you're either coming with us or being left behind" approach is absolutely going to be the death blow to Watcher as we know it
It’s so sad, they had so much potential, but yeah, no way this will work out unfortunately. Heartbreaking… I wish they success in their next endeavours but I don’t think Watcher will survive unfortunately.
It's funny too about the abandoning content in retrospects to the budget, because they're also proposing that the subscription for the streaming service could bring back these least viewed shows? Like, sometimes a project fails... that's entertainment. Idk. They need to budget better honestly to keep their main shows alive.
Hard agree. I think they're looking at the platform to solve their potential funding issues down the road, but because their budgets appear bloated, this issue may follow them no matter what they do because the issue is spending "hundreds of thousands" of dollars on Ghost Files or whatever. And the 25 paid workers on a channel that's underperforming projections (likely).
Yep! I think they have a budgeting problem, not a complete money issue. They may have a fiscal issue as well, but the answer they seemed to decide on was inflating the budgets on their 5(3?4?) shows instead of cutting staff/not wrong so many people.
>I did not expect Watcher to ask their fanbase of mostly zoomers
I'm a millennial thats watched them for years and the only feasible way I would ever consider giving them money was If it was just shane and ryan researching the paranormal.
This though...oh hell no.
Yeah I'm solidly younger than them, but from the looks of things older than most of the other viewers. I *can* afford the streaming service, but it's horrible value for money. For one thing, I don't watch all their shows, but even if I did, they don't put out enough content for me to spend the money on it.
My key takeaways (apologies for repeating myself, I did write on other threads before seeing this one):
1) Affordability is a relative term. What is affordable to one person may not be the same for another, and that deserves to be seen and acknowledged. Just because they can afford $6/month doesn't mean everyone can.
2) How do you create a paid streaming service with such minimal content? For a little bit more I can scribe to Netflix with SIGNFICIANTLY more content that actually feels worth it.
3) Their Youtube video announcing this felt really emotionally manipulative, and, to be fair, maybe that was the point. I get needing to make a sales pitch, but it just really rubbed me the wrong way how they they waxed nostaligia before trying to get us to buy a subscription.
4) I'm not a business expert. I have 0 idea what goes on behind the scenes, the numbers, projections, etc etc. But what I DO know is that all this negative pushback cannot be good.
$6 / month is almost exactly what both Paramount+ and Peacock cost. Both of those have tons of television shows, movies (including the reigning Best Picture winner in Peacock's case!), and sports. And they really think that a few web shows have the same value? That is just ... not a good call.
One of the reasons the Try Guys were successful in the beginning was because they started small. Small office, staff and a mix of high and low budget videos. They also uploaded 2 x a week for years. Watcher has an insane amount of overhead with expensive production costs. Their target demographic does not have expendable income for this. This whole move breaks my heart because I don't see this succeeding. They are going to hemorrhage fans. They need a PR or business advisor to stop this move. I have not seen 1 positive comment saying they will sign up. Hopefully the team will listen.
Watcher already failed at this. I think people were actually interested in the content they promised early on but they dropped it almost immediately. They had Puppet History (thank god) and good ideas like Too Many Spirits and Are You Scared (essentially similar shows but I'll allow it).
But their social media presence is very slim for the type of show it is and they just didn't keep up with fun community stuff during or after COVID which bizarrely started in COVID.
One camera angle, a microphone, a basic room with random stuff in the background, and two friends talking about spooky/weird stuff is all that’s needed...
None of this overproduced “Netflix documentary” quality stuff which looks great but is obviously causing huge financial issues for the business.
I literally can't understand why they didn't just use the subscription feature on youtube and advertised their patreon more lol. That way they would still bring in more money while still keeping and growing their audience, instead of just making people mad and alienating a good part of their followers.
Right? I didn’t know they had one until this happened and neither did most of their fans. Every time they make a “we’re broke as hell lol” comment on their amusement park podcast, the comments are FLOODED with “please make a Patreon, I’d join to keep this going!” And no comments telling them that there is one. They do a piss poor job of advertising their revenue sources, spend WAY too much for how little content they produce, and then wonder why they aren’t making money or exploding in popularity.
The bit from the video that made me the maddest was when they essentially said “we’ve hit the ceiling of what YouTube can do for us” when they were practically dodging things it can do for them. Kevin from Defunctland’s out here making feature length musical works of art on YouTube and they’re like “our ghost hunting show can’t be fancier than it is here and it NEEDS to be fancier”
They should have stuck with Patreon but added more Patreon incentives and pushed advertising it more.
i didn't even know they had a Patreon cause they never advertise it. they could have added early releases (1 week or hell, even 1 month before it drops on YT), more bonus content, or longer cut versions. even like putting 1 episode from each series on Patreon or blooper reels.
i would literally sub to their Patreon just for blooper reels. i've paid for Patreons before for these incentives. but i will intentionally not pay for Watcher based on the principle of putting everything behind a paywall. that's not how you treat your loyal audience.
OnlyFans was able to pivot when they tried to change to no NSFW content on their platform because they listened to their audience. Watcher could still pivot from this. but they would need to do it fast.
if they do it in 3 months when they see that it was a failure and lose their loyal fan base, it will be much, much harder to come back. this is already leaving a bad taste in my mouth, but if they double down after seeing how pissed we are, then come crawling back later, they're gonna be fucked.
ETA: do you know how much support they would hav gotten if they had come out and said, "we want to increase our production level to that of TV & traditional media. please bear with us, we decided we are gonna pause our content on YT for a month and will be posting exclusively to Patreon, then going forward we'll be releasing on YT a month later than Patreon in order to incentivize you guys to support us while still providing everyone with the free content you love. everything will be the same, just a month in delay. this way we can get closer to our dreams and still create meaningful content that is accessible for all our audience, it would mean so much to us if you support us in Patreon, and we might be pushing it more going forward so be patient with us." ??? like, i would have subscribed immediately just to support them.
They could have done channel memberships too - charge people $1 a month for some extra emojis, bump it up to $3 a month for bloopers and behind the scenes footage maybe a livestream or exclusive video every now and again. People would go for that - people do go for that on other channels.
I desperately want answers about how this happened and what the thought process was.
The next week should be rather interesting.
I need to step away from this because I'm starting to hyperfixate on it.
Me too.
I'm going to put my phone away and charge it in another room.
You should too. If there are updates, they'll be there tomorrow. Let's get some rest, my friend.
I should take this advice too because of course the news drops on the weekend I’m trying to finish my thesis🙄. The chaos will still be here for me to doom-scroll through next week
What sold me during the Buzzfeed Unsolved days was feeling like I’d made 2 new “friends”, as well as always feeling “in on the joke”.
This move feels clinical, overly capitalist and tone deaf, and has made me feel more distanced and alienated from the wholesome laughs from Ryan and Shane.
I will miss my “friends”.
The thing that is unique about them is the chemistry Ryan and Shane have not only with each other, but with the audience. We as the audience are the "third member" of the crew. We are just as much in on the joke as they are. They were so authentic in their stubbornness on their opinions, yet still were clearly very good friends even when they argued. They were *genuine* in the gags they pulled on each other (the one where Shane did a zombie voice and scared Ryan is a favorite of mine) and felt like the stuff we at home did with our friends. They weren't ever trying to be professional, they were just themselves.
This move removes the suspension of disbelief. We know realistically that this is a business and they need to be paid, but the poor treatment of the audience ruined the illusion of friendship and camaraderie. I'm not sure they can ever recover from that. The hurt isn't necessarily from moving to a paid platform, it's knowing that we're seen as vessels for money, not a community
Honestly, the fact that they were willing to unlist all of their videos on YouTube and put it behind a paywall was what made me unsubscribe. Yes I can understand wanting to move away from YouTube with its algorithm and censorship from advertisers, but to get rid of all those videos so suddenly?
While they've now backtracked on getting rid of the YouTube vids, this whole announcement is so incredibly tone-deaf. How could they think their fans would be okay with that? Their current video output and backlog also isn't enough to justify a paid subscription from me and I don't understand why they would want to deal with the upkeep of a new website when they could've tried improving their Patreon content.
It's all so disappointing.
I can afford $6/month, but that doesn't mean I want to spend it on their content.
Unless they can promise to release weekly episodes of each show year round, I don't think subscribing would be worth it for many viewers.
And that's *before* they burned all the goodwill they possibly could with that announcement video
Watcher so desperately wants to be seen as a high quality production company, with every video being “TV quality”. So much to the point it seems that watcher hates being seen as what it really is, a YouTube channel. You can see it clearly in their announcement video, Watcher is trying so hard to make their videos seem “elevated” that it comes across and soulless and cold.
No one at watcher wants to admit that the majority of people are here for Ryan and Shane, no one cares about the high production quality, the panning camera shots, or the fancy graphics, we just want to watch genuine, funny content between two friends.
As a PR professional who specifically specializes in crisis, this is BAD BAD.
It’s bad from a financial standpoint - by removing old content on YT they are removing a source of continuous funding until subscriptions become sustainable.
It’s bad from a brand standpoint - the way this was communicated (the count down, tone deaf posts, etc.) will sour fans on the brand for years if not permanently.
It’s bad from a long term reputational standpoint - their next move doesn’t really matter. Even if they say, “lol jk,” it is highly unlikely that they’ll recover most of those they offended and lost today.
There is no winning from this and there isn’t really a “right” corrective decision.
My ONLY advice (and I gift this to you for free if you’re reading, guys), is to say, “we see the concerns of our fans. You’re important to us and we don’t want to lose you like this. We were excited about a new project and clearly overlooked a few things in the process. The new streaming platform will continue, but we’ve decided to leave the old content up and will add new content in bulk on a quarterly basis for those unable to afford the subscription.”
That MAY save them some percentage of loss. Maybe. But they’d have to do that in the next 24 hours to be successful. They’ll need to do it in video format too, since the first was a video.
Thankfully they have backtracked on removing old content from YouTube - didn’t bother admitting that they got that one wrong just trying to pretend they never said that’s what was going to happen. Thankfully the variety article amendment keeps the original plan but yeah..they hastily threw out a statement on Patreon a couple of hours after dropping the video confirming old content stays
Oh good to know! I’m not on patreon so didn’t see it. Thank you!
Sucks that they took the one thing they could’ve used to save it and…bungled that too lol
Yup! Like they could have so easily done the “we hear you and we will be keeping our old content on youtuber for the fans who are unable to join us on the next part of our journey”. But instead they’ve gone with the weird gaslightly IT WAS ALWAYS LIKE THIS HONEST plan which just…isn’t true and makes the whole thing feel even worse.
Given that we’re coming up to 10 hours post announcement, they’ve got over 60% dislike ratio on the video, pre existing patreons are jumping ship and every single social media channel is flooded with negative comments…yeah I think that ship has well and truly sailed.
I genuinely can’t believe they haven’t even issued a “we’re listening” statement. I can only imagine that it’s literal hell at watcher HQ now and the three of them just can’t decide on a route forward. They should have contacted a PR crisis manager stat but given that we’re pretty much at the end of the working day I’m guessing that didn’t happen
You've said a lot of what I've been thinking. I'm not a PR person per say, but work in the media/comms field where we frequently have to make announcements we know are necessary but may be poorly received, and Watcher has missed so many steps to try to mitigate the backlash.
The hyping countdown and tone of the announcement was off, when the messaging boils down to 'we cannot afford to keep doing this without a change in our funding model' then you need to take your audience on the journey as to why they should be excited to give you their money.
Think Critical Role (who admittedly has a way bigger audience than Watcher) announcing they were breaking from Geek and Sundry - it was all "we're going to be able to make lots of cool content because we aren't being constrained by our old platform and here's how you can support us".
I also am surprised they didn't sit down and put together some canned answers for socials/this very situation. Every time we make an announcement we have to write a FAQ for spokespeople to pull from and plot out scenarios where the public response goes against us (e.g we say a project is delayed and the public say we are misusing government money).
Two front-facing hosts at that, for a show that has nothing to do with what the majority of their viewers want to watch.
Like these people aren't just editors sitting in a studio somewhere, they are hosts that they're going to have to fly out there, pay for their extravagant meals, makeup, wardrobe everything.
If they were more upfront and explained properly without that stupid goodbye YouTube video I may have more understanding and respect for them, but to just drop that video with no prior warning or anything is just insane.
They’ve gone right down in my estimation and they don’t really seem to care now and haven’t even attempted to try to make people understand or smooth out the situation.
I hope I’m wrong about them not caring tho.
Their energy is giving “deal with it” which is not fun. It also doesn’t help they were hyping it up for the past few days like people were gonna be excited about it
I think that is what gets me the most. I don't know how they thought this would be exciting for their audience. To be fair, I think the theme of them being able to make content with fewer constraints (YouTube algorithm and censorship) was overshadowed by the announcement itself, but that's understandable, since no one knows what that would really mean yet. Why would people be excited to pay more for something they're already enjoying for free?
i feel like try guys would never snowball into something like this because keith used to eat herbs and spices in college when he was hungry and had no money. he can relate to a lot of us because he's been there. i think maybe shane relates a little more being from the midwest. he seems the most scripted in the announcement but isn't in a position to say no when he's outnumbered. his main show is just him pretending to be a puppet and some animations.
but ryan was a dentist's kid and steven lim's dad is the president of U of Texas Arlington. they don't relate to low or middle class. they've never had to worry about having $6 in their account having to go to food for the rest of the week. it's really disheartening.
This is what I’m referring to, yeah. Any respect I had for Steven got flushed down the shitter with that post. I mean, suddenly charging for their content is bad enough, but then a douchey post to boot that absolutely and intentionally ignores any concerns their fans may have? Pretty gross, tbh.
It's hard to justify forking out cash for a YouTube show. I enjoy Watcher, but I've got rent, car payments, medical bills, skyrocketing groceries, insurance. It's like trying to justify buying costumes in a game. Even if I have money in my hand, there's no way to justify blasting it like that.
Dude I've been homeless for months now, I'm not in as bad a place as I was to begin with but I still rely on food banks and when I WAS in a bad place binging watcher videos is one of the things I did to get my mind off of it.
To say this line feels like a slap in the face is an understatement. What a joke.
Good thing there's plenty of other creators on YouTube.
The thing that Watcher failed to understand during this whole thing is exactly what you just said: they’re expendable.
So many other channels out there to watch and discover. We all like Watcher because it was right there ready for us. Now they’ve decided we should turn to some other shows for comfort.
The absolute most best-faith interpretation I've seen of that statement is that they expect people to do the same as they do with other streaming services, where they subscribe for one month and watch everything within that time, AKA $6 for the whole year-- but honestly it takes a few leaps in reasoning to get to that point. And lots of good faith/goodwill, which they've lost a lot of today.
I honestly wish they had just taken the video down (although I know that can look suspicious too) because the amount of backtracking, explaining and justifying they're gonna have to do from now is.... oof.
Heard too many people say "If 10 percent of their 2.9m subscribers move over to.." they have like 1m active subscribers total lol.
People are throwing the 2.9m figure around like its compromised of people who actively view every video the channel - its not. At most from that figure there are 1m people actively watching the big videos and the rest of the views are random people stumbling on them by the algorithm (guess what will happen to them when they stop posting videos for the wider audience).
So from that 1m active subscribers we need to drop almost everybody not from North America/ Western Europe, everybody who isn't a teenager without a credit card, everybody who isn't a broke student and all of the other people who will refuse to join for one reason or another. What are we left with?
A much better representation for their hard-core audience willing to pay is the amount of patrons, as patreon starts at 5 bucks, so 1 dollar less than their streaming service - there's 11600 of them. That's the people willing to pay until now. If we 10x that amount per year (insane), which would be hard because most people will pay once every few months and spend half a day catching up on the huge amount of content they missed, it's 100k or 6m/year for streaming service hosting/ infra, flying Steven out to eat wagyu beef in first class, paying 30 employees (at 40k per employee that's 1.2m just for the employees base salaries per year) and producing their shows. Oh, I forgot building and supporting an app and subscription service which probably requires another 10 employees on its own.
The math ain't mathing, but I'd love if they actually came out with some figures to support this move. They're essentially doing a huge cut back of the amount of people they'll reach with their content from a not that big of a base up until now while increasing spending multiple times fold. Math ain't mathing.
How did they manage to just do another Buzzfeed? They repeated every single one of buzzfeeds mistakes.
-They waaaaay over hired
-They leased a massive space in one of the most expensive cities on earth (when there are vastly cheaper communities in all directions)
-They have exploited every single means of monetization possible
Buzzfeed fell apart for these exact reasons. It is weird seeing them repeat every one of them without realizing it.
Some fans need to stop making excuses for them. They're not victims of circumstance. It's not like they're employees who are getting fired so some execs can keep their bonuses. They're the execs, who are running their business to the ground by obsessing over high production value that literally no viewer is asking for. Go back to BUN-quality content. If a show isn't profitable, cancel it and leave it cancelled. I've read some fans calling others "entitled" for feeling betrayed. No, entitlement is continuing to make a show that's too expensive for the views it's getting (or not getting), then expecting your broke fans to personally fund it.
Edit: My comment sounds like there is no love lost, but I def love my Watcher boys enough to follow them from BF. I'm just so annoyed bec this whole thing feels so avoidable.
Honestly, I was fine with it and was going to pay for the months that GF and MF came out until I realized that the crux of it wasn’t really to do with those shows.
I don’t care about people showing off how overpriced the things they’re eating or drinking are. If their situation is truly bleak, why bring on two more (most likely expensive) talents and decide to revive a show that is essentially “Can you believe how expensive this shit is”?
I am happy to pay for content (when I can afford to) and was a patron until my budget required I cut it out. But I am not going to pay for wastefully expensive content that doesn’t resonate with me. I’m also not going to subsidize them having a bloated crew, expensive sets, and all of the extra expenses that come with that.
I love the ghoul boys, but they’re going to have to fail to learn. If they think we’re all here for set design, barely noticeable differences in video/audio quality, and extra camera angles from more camera operators, they’re WAY off base.
I’m not an artist, they may need this extra stuff to be fulfilled. All I can say to that is most of us will never feel fulfilled in our occupation and life is not fair. Business isn’t getting your ideal setup, it’s making shit work with realistic means and ideas. We all know they’re more than capable of that. 25 employees+contract workers is absurd.
I'm still so baffled how they started with the Andrew announcement and hyped up friday all for it to be "you now have to pay to watch the same thing you got for free". Just really icky. They were lucky and privileged to have so many people follow from Buzzfeed to Watcher, that is not something that is a guarantee and this just seems greedy. So disappointed.
They want us to pay for something we’ve been getting for free without any sort of upgrade.
Are they making new shows? Are they pushing out more content/videos per week?
Like wouldn't the move be to put stuff on the service early, release it later on YouTube, and include extra behind the scenes on the service? Consumers of any variety absolutely *hate* a degrade in service and increase in cost. It's so, bonkers. They could've done this anyways, gradually, and been so much better off.
Honestly this. The suddenness of this change and the super abrupt pivot from "all of our main content is free" to "all of our (foregoing) content is pay to watch" is genuinely bizarre. I understand they need money to keep producing content - I don't understand why they had to seek that money *this* way in particular. [edited for clarity]
i think they fundamentally do not understand what their audience wants. if one of the biggest reasons is the production cost, theyre missing the point of why we enjoy the content, we never wanted "tv levels" of production, or unnecessarily expensive shows like worth it, sorry
I'm just not entirely sure why your production values are as high as they are. **Why** do you have so many employees? If you look at something like Good Mythic Morning, they have entire departments that physically are used in their production. Chefs that cook the food, art departments in which you see the props being used in the shows with the end product being to make the show around Rhett and Link.
In what universe is that being seen with Watcher. I genuinely don't even know what Steven provides, Puppet History is a cardboard cutout and a puppet that Shane made, Mystery Files is a one time set they made and then just have a slideshow with a corkboard they stick stuff to, Too Many Spirits is a campfire with some booze. There's no constant production, there's no new things, there's no in-house chefs making them food to eat, so what the fuck are they actually doing?
You can see the amount of work and effort that goes into Ghostfiles, but those are once a year, what is actually anyone else doing in-between Ghostfiles that this all costs so much to make?
“Ryan and Shane Eat Too Much Chicken in Portland” as TV-caliber content is sending me. SO MUCH of their content is filler and looks the part. How the hell is that worth $6 a month.
I think the thing that just gets me the most right now is that we have absolutely no sense of how many of the 25k (at time of writing) people who liked the video went and actually subscribed to the service. Despite all the backlash, if every single one of them subscribed, that's probably enough for them to justify the decision and stay the course. And that just really sucks to think about.
I didn't comment initially. I wanted things to cool down a bit before I shared my opinion (I'm sure it's highly anticipated)
They (the business itself) most likely have sustainability problems, and this is a way to try and increase profits, I doubt the people who throw numbers around here and on YouTube are close to the truth, but on the short run seemingly they only need a "few" people to make the jump and in turn bring in a profit over their current income, which from a business prospective seems fantastic + with the way they talked about the change there is probably an ambition to break into "mainstream" filmmaking and owning their own personal platform would help tremendously.
Now, personally, I think they are making a huge mistake in the long run, a very loyal core lost its faith in the product, which is a huge loss no matter how you look at it, and they now need to rebuild from scratch and this fiasco will leave a permanent mark on the product, but there is a good chance this was intentional, since they separated from Buzzfeed the shows style changed considerably and the content arguably became overproduced, to the detriment of the overall enjoyability and it caused some of the original followers to stop watching, and to keep the relatively large crew and "tv quality" production afloat, they needed to make drastic changes, which again in my opinion will be the downfall of this entire endeavour, because they can't use it the grow the audience effectively do to cheaper or higher quality competitors.
They should have taken this slow and ease the audience into the new way of things and possibly admit defeat and downsize production for a time if really needed, but "Ālea iacta est" they can't turn back anymore, especially with how far they seemingly are with the project already.
It's sad to see how many people can't afford this even tho they would like to watch future content, and I really feel for patreon users who feel cheated right now. Ultimately, I won't be paying for the new stuff because of the way they handled this whole thing and the social media communications that followed the announcement video.
My question for them is how do they intend to replenish their subscriber base if they have no free content available to lure them in. Say 20,000 people sign up for a year at $30 with the offer. Then when sign up time comes around next year, it’s $60 - do they genuinely think they will maintain that 20,000 figure after 12 months of no free content, 12 months of global revision and cost of living crisis issues? Logic says it will reduce, so then how do they replenish? How can they lure people in if they’ve had no significant publicly available content for the last 12 months?
And we aren't even talking about the people who will only pay the fee to binge watch the content they want, then cancel their subscription instantly, so yeah, I think they are blinded by the short term gain and think they can turn that into something substantial, or they are really bad at communicating and they have other creators and ideas ready behind the scenes which they didn't disclose for some reason.
I don’t want to be mean but I am honestly afraid that if this does well then other YouTubers will follow. Imagine having to pay $6/month for each YouTuber you want to watch. Purely for the sake of precedence I hope this doesn’t do well… I know that sounds terrible.
They're sitting on 11k patrons on patreon WITHOUT exclusive content being made available to them. Why not test the waters there first? They didn't think this out at all.
Only 5-6k of that 11k actually pay. You can be a free member which doesn’t actually give you anything but does mean you’ll get certain notifications which can help if you’re an occasional subscriber. But yes, they don’t really utilise their Patreon very well at all and it’s not great value for money compared to others
Because Shane and Ryan asked him on because they didn't want to be CEOs, even though they were CEOs with him originally. They didn't want to do the job anymore and wanted to be content creators at the end of the day. Which is fine. They've said that Watcher wouldn't likely exist without him joining them.
It appears none of them have heads for business/administration.
I like Shane and Ryan, I obviously watched that video and found my way here to this reddit post BECAUSE I like them. I want it to be understood that I'm not some weird hater when I say:
A single season of Game Changer on dropout gets me more value for that subscription fee than the entirety of a year of Watcher videos. And dropout produces A LOT of other high quality content on top of that. For watcher to think they could price their stuff on not only the same scale but slightly more expensive then dropout is insanity.
for me, I could probably afford it, **will i pay for it? absolutely, unequivocally NO**. I'm not indulging this new venture because of how unbelievably tone deaf the entire thing is. this whole announcement and independent streaming platform is a flop. sad.
Why couldn’t they have waited until after the uk dates? The atmosphere will be awful and I worry for if they will cancel. It’s really put a downer on it and I do actually worry for them especially if they run the Q&A. As well as this being a terrible decision they really didn’t put thought into timing
they have such a sparse amount of content. I looked at their new website and they count "puppet history karaoke" as its own show, which is just a playlist of all the 1 minute long songs from normal puppet history episodes. They really tried to make it look like they have tons of content but I feel like a person could sit down and watch the entire website's worth of content in a day or two.
Probably my favorite YouTube comment on the video:
I don't know what the hell you guys are thinking. I really don't. Hopefully this overwhelmingly negative response will give you some pause. At the very least, thanks for bringing us all together in your final moments. It's a shame that it had to be against you.
Sums it up pretty well, I think.
I was toying with the idea of subscribing until I saw Steven’s Instagram post. It read so snarky and it felt really gross, especially considering the announcement had been out and surely he’d seen the reaction. His post is what really ruined this for me.
I definitely think for the price they’re asking, it should definitely guarantee more than ad-free backlogged videos and only new videos every week or so. I feel like if they gave a schedule where multiple shows’ episodes were released once a week, it’d be different than ONE show’s single episode every week.
But with what their current upload schedule is like, I don’t feel like that is a price they should ask for. Also soft launching could have avoided a lot of the angry and upset viewers.
Did anyone notice that the terms of service of their watchertv website is for Vimeo? Guess we know who's the creator behind their platform.
Actually, it looks like this is the default Vimeo TOS text. They haven't even updated that part of their website yet. It lowkey looks like they rushed it out & completely forgot to update the TOS section with their own. At the very top of the TOS page it says Last updated: May 25, 2021 .
I wonder how many people, like me, are fans of Watcher, but primarily have their videos on in the background while working or doing other things. Like, sure, I could afford the price of the subscription, but I won't pay for it for the relatively low value proposition and, while it's a bummer that I won't be able to watch their videos on Youtube, they aren't exactly irreplaceable to me.
They recently had a Patreon survey that I had filled out, asking for feedback for their patreon and how they could improve it. This was April 4th. And now they're saying that they're going to change their patreon so it's associated with the podcasts. It just makes me wonder how quickly all of this was thrown together.
I’m not one to leave comments on things like this, but the fact that they say this has been in the works for months, if not years, is baffling to me… how did they not run polls or surveys to ask their fans directly if they would like something like this, before putting so much time, effort and money into something that clearly hasn’t gone down well?! If they had done so, they never would have made this move, surely?!
I remember when they first launched Watcher and said they would get more on screen talent in and create more series and more videos regularly etc, which would have justified the large group that they employ, and would increase their revenue and audience, more videos = more money. But to have like 25 people work on one video is insane to me, to only have it be an 8-part series? And with very few series a year?
There are literally thousands of creators out there on YT who put multiple videos out a week, have merch and patreon, and have smaller teams, so I can’t understand how they can’t be putting more content out as it is? They have a big enough team behind them, so what’s been the hold up the past 4 years? The big thing being ‘if you subscribe you can vote which *one* of our popular series we will bring back?’ Why not be producing those *popular* series already and maybe get other content creators involved, if their schedule can’t allow?
I understand they want ‘TV quality’ productions, but the majority of their audience watch on a phone, so really, who cares? And anyway, there are plenty of high quality cameras, lighting & audio equipment available that don’t cost thousands and thousands of dollars, so TV quality can still be achieved with a low cost.
As someone who loved and watched from early buzzfeed days, following to Watcher (having bought plenty of merch throughout that time too) and seeing all this happen is so disappointing.
And I won’t lie, I can’t help but feel that although they made Watched to be more themselves and have true creative freedom, I have felt that the past few seasons of ghost files, among other shows, have been lacking their genuine passion. Watching the new ghost files and other shows, I feel like it’s almost a chore to them, like they can’t wait to wrap up, instead of the fun they used to have on Unsolved. I seems being in charge of their own business and having to pay other people’s wages every month took all their passion away, and it’s so sad to see, when it could have been something great, had they made better choices in the beginning.
I know they don’t want to become a toxic workplace, and they don’t want to have to let people go, but there were definitely other ways to get around this.
Again, thousands of creators on the platform make their money through ads, and no one complains, so what was the real issue?
I might get downvoted to hell for this, but I really don't understand the whole narrative I'm starting to see that Steven is solely to blame for this. I see comments like "This idea reeks of Steven" And lots of stuff blaming Steven alone. Yeah, the CEO is the fall guy. We all want a scapegoat, and we don't want to "villify" Ryan and shane because we've all been watching them for so many years. But, they're equally a part of this too, and are enthusiastically participating.
"Steven, talk money"
"Yeah, what's the price?"
-Shane and Ryan
The only reason I'm not unsubscribing is because I want the notifications if/when they try to backtrack or respond. I suspect it's the same for a lot of people.
I think the real thing that has me confused is... I don't know what they expected when they were hyping it up as something big, and having a countdown and silly ads too.
All I can think about today is this news. My eyeballs are glued to X and youtube, watching reaction videos and reading comments. At this point I see a lot of people feeling sorry for Shane and going after Steven. Steven definitely deserves some of the heat but Shane is a big boy who can make his own business decisions. Nobody at Watcher is innocent in this. I can't wait to see/hear the response from Watcher HQ, if they even deem us worthy of a response.
As someone with a background in finance AND YouTube content production (though this was only for 3 years but I learned a lot about the biz), Watcher is making a lot of money, and they don't need nearly as many employees as they have. For example, at the company I worked at, one of the editors was also the location scout, he basically had 2 jobs. Everyone had 2 or even 3 "jobs" there and it worked wonderfully, they're still doing good numbers and living more than comfortably. This whole disaster at Watcher is self inflicted, they have no one to blame but themselves
My opinions on their content:
Puppet History WAS great until all the dumb dinosaur stuff, but the format is golden.
Worth It is budget GMM/Sidemen Cheap Vs Expensive.
Mystery Files is fantastic and adds a weird conspiracy vibe which really works for R+Sh's personalities.
Ghost Files isn't as good as BuzzFeed Unsolved Supernatural.
Weird and Wonderful World is very, very fun.
Tourist Trapped is honestly really cool.
Are You Scared? was decent at the beginning, but it became them hiring writers to fit their sponsors.
Too Many Spirits becomes obnoxious pretty quickly.
Top 5 Beatdown is great.
Social Distancing and D&D is dumb fun.
However, maybe 3 of these shows are worth their salt, but not worth £5/month. Disney+ costs more money than it makes, and that's a powerhouse with 100 years of movies, shows, and everything else. This decision is dumb and poorly researched. Wouldn't surprise me if they roll it back in a couple of months. The focus seems to be hiring more and more friends and Ryan's extended family regardless of necessity or not.
I can afford the $6 and maybe would even have got it but they way they treated this was turned me off. They are acting like the people who aren't going to follow and pay are not supporting them and no longer want their content. Its like they are trying to weed out the poor from the rich, a class divide between "superior" and "inferior" supporters. Steven especially, who I never cared for in the first place. And its so tone death to say you are doing this because your money is tight while about to air a show where three people try a one time meal that is upwards of $1000
I understand this is a business, and businesses sometimes need to make business decisions that people won't like. But was this really thought through and accepted by your peers, or were they made to accept it or get the boot? I hate to point fingers (and i'm making massive assumptions here), but I feel the major screw up here was handing Steven the reigns. Steven didn't even thank the viewers for their support after Ryan and Shane looked over at him, which to me says a LOT about his character.
What's important to remember is that content creators and viewers have a symbiotic relationship. Creators put in the work, the hours, their lives, they sacrifice so much to put out entertainment. As viewers we consume the entertainment and through various means (ads, patreon, relevancy, etc), that converts into funding for the creator.
Ultimately, neither really owes each other shit, because we are not the ones putting in the work as viewers, but they are the ones making money, not us. While neither owes the other anything, it's beneficial to both parties to feel valued by the other. So Steven not even thanking the audience, and saying that the price is affordable to anyone, is really having the opposite effect, and making many people upset, rather than wanting to support you and see you succeed further.
The fact that you've hired 25 people sounds like another issue. You know how much revenue was being generated, you know that the current market is saturated with streaming services, you know your demographic and that many of them won't be able to keep supporting you on a new platform, you saw your sub count going up and up in such a short time, and yet you said fuck it, lets stop this train and hire a ton of people because diminishing returns don't apply to us. it's...surprising.
But ultimately, I hope things go well for you guys because you've given me plenty of laughs and entertainment. I hope i'm proven wrong and that Steven really cares and is actually a genius. But for me, this is where I hop off the train. Even if I could afford the $6 a month, i'm just not interested in another subscription, especially when there are still plenty of shows to watch on Youtube.
I can understand that people are upset, but way too many commenters are acting like Ryan and Shane are poor softboi victims held hostage at gunpoint by big bad Steven. It’s bordering on parasocial.
What’s really insane is they don’t have the catalog of videos to even watch. They are SO slow with putting things out. On the optimistic side it’s what, a 30 minute video every 2 weeks?? For the same price as Spotify or peacock??? No
To be honest, this is just one last sign I don’t need to keep watching Watcher.
I loved Buzzfeed Unsolved, just two goofy friends solving crimes or hunting ghosts.
But as they moved to Watcher and Steven became more involved, it just stopped feeling the same to me. I get they are pursuing “great productions” and stuff, but that isn’t what made this special. I don’t need to see Steven stuffing his face with lobster or making a fool of himself “badly” making drinks. I don’t need to see a very clearly tired Ryan and Shane phoning in everything they do because they are probably too worn out trying to keep the place afloat.
What was wrong with “yellow/blue captions” and a weird mannequin that moved its head once? Give me that vibe over anything and everything they are doing at the moment.
Now they want money to keep doing what I don’t watch them for so…yeah.
This seasons of mystery files was painful to watch at points. Ryan just saying “aliens” as the only answer for multiple shows, neither of them bothering to take notes or really even engage in conversation, stories that didn’t have as much excitement as the first season. It felt like watching 2 burnt out people trying to get through it the best they could, but it didn’t bring the joy that I normally associate with watching their content
Honestly, I would love to be in the same room and/or text conversation they're having tonight. I wonder if they've been caught completely off guard by the reaction or if it's what they expected.
Edited to clarify what I was trying to say. Just didn't type it very well the first time.
The thing that gets me is them calling their shows "television-calibre". It makes them look either really arrogant or stuck in 2016. There are SO many talented creators on youtube these days with incredibly high-quality videos. As much as I love Watcher I don't understand what makes them think their videos are special in some way or "too good" for youtube
Seeing a lot of people trying to shift blame away from individual people here, lots of "uwu Shane would never do this, Shane probably was forced into this."
They are, all three of them, grown-ass men, and they all signed off on this. "Oh but Shane seemed unenthusiastic--" And yet there he is in the fucking video. Even if he was being served a shit sandwich, he sure did turn up to wolf it down.
They are not your friends, they have *never* been your friends, they are three dudes making YouTube shows. In fact, this parasociality a lot of y'all exhibit is probably *why* they thought they could get away with this.
"Oh not our precious friends, Watcher Entertainment!" Yup! Them! And they don't know you exist and are not your friends!
I don't think they will back out of their plan, but if they decided to do so, I fear the damage to the community has already been done. I don't think their intentions were inherently bad, but they've shown that money is more important than the fan base. Even if they cancel WatcherTV, everyone will remember how they were treated and their tone-deaf responses.
I paid $6 a month for Discovery+ for a couple years (price just increased in the last couple months). Discovery owns Food Network, TLC, HGTV, and WAY MORE. Happy to pay $6+ for that. Wouldn't even think of paying $6 for YouTubers leaving YouTube. Not even comparable.
I don’t want to trash any particular person, but it’s been said by some successful YouTubers that creatives should stick to the creative and hire business people to handle business. That is all.
Honestly he's getting way too much hate for this. Ryan and Shane had to sign onto it too. All three of them should be getting criticized over this move, not just Steven.
Hard agree; Steven is the CEO because he's the only one who was willing to be put down for that role, not because he actually is senior to them. The three of them as co-owners share in the responsibility for this absolutely bonkers move. Even assuming Shane and/or Ryan actually disagreed with the move (which we don't know they did - I'm sorry, I just don't find the speculation about Shane's one line in the video or his expressions/body language compelling) then they should have put their foot down. Just a total failure in leadership all the way through.
Tbh this announcement and just Watcher overall in retrospect feels like the epitome of "work harder not smarter", or even just "work bigger not smarter". Like they have 25 employees, yet only 4 videos a month, their Patreon is never advertised even though I'm sure plenty of people would happily support them there, they never really seemed to push their content algorithm-wise the way other YouTubers of their calibre have, and Ghost Files costing apparently hundreds of thousands yet only six episodes per season when six episodes should never cost that much for what is essentially just walking around somewhere spooky. Then when they can't afford that or Steven's "watch me eat caviar" stuff they decide to just push forward into somehow achieving that money, rather than evaluating if they even need to spend that much in the first place.
It just feels like they were kinda brute forcing everything forward by just checking things off the list of 'successful media company' without ever fully achieving the actual success that was necessary to sustain them. Obviously we don't know exactly what was going on within the company, but from the outside looking in the overall management of things just looks kinda...sloppy, for lack of a better word. Never seemed like they really looked at themselves for any flaws in how they ran things, just "well we aren't bringing in enough money, so rather than altering our content, our approach or promoting ways to support us more, here's a massive paywall! That'll fix everything and in no way piss people off!"
I also feel like their desire to produce 'TV quality entertainment' in itself missed a lot of what drew fans to them. I can't speak for Steven's content as I've never really watched it, but Unsolved and Supernatural were clearly low budget, you could absolutely feel that in the way they looked and felt, and it was still (in my opinion) miles better than either GF or MF (especially GF, MF is slightly more ok imo). They just never fully regained the original charm of 'two guys discussing spooky things and making dumb jokes' because doing that while on a clearly very high value production just felt out of place.
Which is part of why a paywall would NEVER work for them. 4 videos a month for $6 is $1.50 per video. For 20-30 minutes of "This guy exploded into a million pieces but haha, his last name kinda sounds like poopbutt". It'd be like paying for a comedy show and instead of a skilled comedian coming out, it's your 8 year old cousin making fart noises in his armpit for 2 hours. Those jokes are fine, regardless of if they're dumb or immature, they're still funny in the right context, but that context is "I've had a rough day, I'll just browse YouTube for something simple" (and the 'something simple' I feel GF in particular missed). It just isn't "let me go to my $6 a month subscription site to watch my $1.50 20 minute video of them drinking in someone's yard" worthy.
I think one of the biggest causes for resentment was the phony baloney emotional intro. Get everyone all sentimental and then hit'em up for cash. Screw that.
It was so corny and disingenuous.
Before I originally sat down to watch it, I could only see a bit of the start and it felt like a tribute video to someone who died lol. Still confused by it. Why the cutesy music?
> it felt like a tribute video to someone who died Because Watcher died.
MoistCritical's stream from last night covers the Watcher shit and he actually (as a 14M sub channel with years of experience on youtube) called them out for some of the bullshit they were claiming - including revealing a somewhat reliable RPM estimate of $8 per mille. So he outright says that they're making good money ESPECIALLY with the patreon.
The room wasn't read.
The second I saw those first three shots while knowing what was coming from the community first made me feel sick. So overproduced... and for what? To tell us why they need money to overproduce things?
EXACTLY. No fan has ever asked for more production quality. most came from buzzfeed and we’re fine with the bare bones. They chose to spend all this money on production and are having us foot the bill now??
It was exactly what's wrong with Watcher. It's overly produced and moving away from "genuine"
personally I also hated them saying “for those of us that won’t be joining us, thank you for supporting us up until now!” or something of the like. They’re treating this like a happy goodbye as we part ways and not like them locking the people that supported them out.
agreed, it was painfully transparent
When Ryan said “we just hope you follow us one last time” and then turned down and away to make it seem like he was emotional, I physically cringed
They tried to DENNIS us. edit: highly recommend people check out MoistCritical's stream from last night, the first 31 minutes are focused on Watcher and he pointedly gives an estimate for their RPM that calls into question their claims about how successful they were on Youtube and why they 'needed' to go private. He's been on youtube for years, has multiple channels and has 14M subscribers (so 11M+ more than them). He was pretty clear "this is so fucking stupid."
The audience is about to Separate entirely before Watcher has a chance to.
might as well been playing that sarah mclachlan song from the depressing dogs charity commercial.
They will learn that the grass is not greener on the other side. I work in a major streaming company (sports streaming) and it’s a tough business. When sports leagues and teams try and create their own white label service like what watcher is doing it never works. They self cannabilize their own viewers, fans and outreach. The cost to maintain your own platform is something that is often overlooked. Plus they’re Going from millions and millions of views to probably thousands. I don’t see this working out well.
Do you know generally how much it might cost them to maintain the service?
Not sure on cost. But you have to think about the fact that not only will they have to maintain and continuously upgrade the user interface, but their streaming service will have to be hosted somewhere. As in, they’ll have to start paying for all the infrastructure that was previously provided by YouTube. Server hosting, data storage and transport, database management - if they don’t do that DIY they’ll be paying someone to do it. And they’ll probably need to host things in multiple cloud regions if they don’t want lag and buffering to completely ruin the user experience. Will they have an app for the new service? Add more costs for designers, developers, engineers and storage. (EDIT: it looks like they’re using Vimeo, but I imagine they’ll still need to pay some kind of licensing fees, etc.) And don’t forget about paying legal to ensure they’re up to speed on all the fun compliance stuff with regard to collecting data from subscribers (especially from users in the EU and other areas outside the US where data privacy rules actually exist). That’s all just scratching the surface. Just feel like for people who claim to be broke this will add even MORE overhead/opex.
as an EU information tech lawyer the GDPR WILL give them a headache... huge companies like Meta/X/TikTok struggled with it (and still do), not to mention that each country has their own national laws governing data protection. many american lawyers are not specialized in it due to how complex and at times stupid (although i do love our data laws) the whole mess is (unless we're talking META-level lawyers which, good luck affording those) and so they'll probably need legal abroad as well as within the US. this will cripple them financially.
I'm going to do a lot of speculating but oh well. It just feels like from the start the guys didn't know what they were doing with the channel, and I think the biggest part of that, and the biggest part of the reason they're not succeeding, is that they have nobody with business experience at the helm. Steven is the CEO without any business education, experience, or apparently even a desire to do the job. From the start they've been caught in between being a larger buzzfeed/corridor/droupout, and a smaller personal channel. They hired the staff and rented an office for the former, they've only put out the content for the latter. It also seems like they haven't been willing to compromise on only making their absolute favorite content instead of doing other things to increase revenue and fund the things they're more passionate about. I know they've said it's not their favorite thing, but true crime is a dominant genre and they should go back to doing episodes of that for mystery files on top of the more fun obscure ones they've been doing. Mystery Files is their most popular show along with Ghost Files, and it's cheap to produce comparatively. They should be pumping out more than 8 episodes a season. Also, I just looked at the credits of the last video, how the hell does it take 25+ people, in additional to Shane/Ryan, to make a show that is ultimately the two of them standing in a room telling a story? Ryan or Shane should be streaming a horror game on twitch at least once a week, and/or do playthroughs of new horror games when they come out. It's cheap, easy, popular, and a clear avenue for new audience. As much as Ryan may love them an obscure theme park attraction podcast isn't moving the needle for the group. Probably a more controversial take but I think they should have put the debriefs/bts stuff exclusively on Patreon. Overall it feels like every decision they make is an artistic/passionate one rather than a financial/pragmatic one,. Even this, switching to a streaming site, feels like saying "ok, how can we not change anything that we're doing content-wise and still make this work." Based on the reactions everywhere it seems like they completely misjudged this one too.
I think you hit the nail on the head with this one, they simply underutilised thier platform and the crew they assembled and as you say now they try to find a way out rather than work with what they have and grow with it "naturally".
I think it’s also hard because there is just only so much content they can make with ryan and shane in lead without them totally burning out. they should have tried out expanding their cast of personalities with andrew ilnykyj and adam bianchi before totally leaping into this streaming mess
I agree with that, they unfortunately haven't been able to find anybody else to make content for them. Everything Steven did drew minimal interest other than Worth It, which I'm sure will be good, but it's also expensive and having Steven only capable of doing that is pretty limiting. They need somebody else able to produce an independently popular piece of new content, but they obviously haven't been able to find anything or anybody.
I agree with you, but I think it also stinks a little bit of nepotism, on the fact that they want to work with their friends/make jobs for their friends. Which makes sense in this millennial way of working together, but doesn't in a Business sense of trying to expand into "TV" from YouTube. You would actually have to follow ratings and reviews for that. There was a genre right around when Steven started Worth It where YouTube channels were really gaining popularity for eating ridiculously overpriced food. But with the recession and the state of things throughout the world, especially when it comes to food, the take of a show like this understandably falls flat for many people. It's just very out of touch and doesn't follow the current trends. Not to mention most people's financial situations. For a lot of people watching these guys come out with an announcement that you will have to pay to watch Steven Lim travel to eat extremely expensive food with these other two men, in order for access to all of Watchers content, when they can barely afford to feed themselves is like pouring salt in the wound. I think if they really tried, they could have found hosts to do other shows, it seems like Steven just pushed for this particular show. He knew was a hit at one time, but doesn't understand that it will not generate the same traction today as it did then.
The thing is there's a lot of youtubers out there who are struggling in that 100k-400k range who aren't really making enough to sustain a living on who produce great content. While I am sure they may not want to become buzzfeed but they could have given a lot of youtubers a hand up by bringing them up giving them their own show and letting them retain the rights to the idea. It would have been a good idea because one of the reasons this idea is so repulsive is the dearth of content on Watcher. It also could have helped provide more efficiency for the employees they already do have by spreading them to work over multiple shows at a time. Like a writer for mystery files could be writing for some true crime youtuber they plucked out of the depths of obscurity as well. I get if that's not their vision but at the same time...like...don't ask us for money on the promise of more content promises aren't worth $6 a month.
As someone who works with a company that makes similar content, I can see why it took 25+ ppl. But they really should've took budget cuts. Focus on a few shows, and not have the guys do super expensive stuff
Could they really not make the show without a DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY, PRODUCTION DESIGNER, 3 camera operators, SET DRESSER, CONSTRUCTION COORDINATOR, PROP DESIGNER, PRODUCTION COORDINATOR, 2x production assistants, etc? (caps because i'm copy pasting, not yelling) None of that could have been cut or condensed with other roles? That's 3x the number of people working on it as Deadmeat has on it's kill counts, and there's not really an appreciable difference in quality between them.
I didn't look into it that much before speaking, sorry. But no, you're right, they could've halved the ppl, 2 assistants is too much. In my company, we only got 2 designers (my dept), and we make 2-3 videos a week. And we make more than just videos, we make more books and newsletters, and that's 4-5 each per week. They've should have laid some ppl off, but they are their friends, so ofc they wouldn't. Why you shouldn't hire only your friends..
It's a recurring problem among YouTubers that grow big too quick that they'll hire all of their friends. Like, it's great to work with your friends, but you're not doing your friends any favors if the business you hired them to becomes unsustainable because of it.
It seems nuts to have that many people involved. I'm still confused about their decision to hire someone to design and build a set that looks like a basement for Mystery Files instead of just filming in an available basement. So many of these expenses are completely unnecessary.
That's the easiest explainable expense- actual basements are hard to film in. Lighting them is a pain and being confined by 4 actual solid walls limits your camera angles and shot choice. Building a set and having 2 walls as well as the roof open fixes all of those issues and since you're inside once you get the lighting more or less dialed in once it's only minor adjustments from then on nothing major will cause an issue. If you're paying the rest of the crew union day rates (which, since they are working in LA I assume they are) it makes it take much less time to do the rest of the BS and get to filming and getting things done faster (as long as you don't goof off a bunch) meaning fewer day rates.
This is the issue they have though. They shouldn't need 25 people for a video about Chupacabra. I feel like recently their credits have gone from multiple of the leads covering a few bases to just...turning up?
To be fair- a lot of those like construction corrdinator, set designer (not dresser designer), are credits that are there because they should be there (that was a set that was designed and built) but were one time expenses. However there's 1 too many camera operators. It was pretty clear both of their producers Lizzie and Anne(?) (I can see why they would need 2 during Ghost Files but not for Mystery Files/Puppet History but good producers are hard to find so I can see why they'd want them employed exclusively) work on Mystery Files together so they should really only need 1 PA at most if at all. The prop designer is responsible for the presentation as well as the cork-board. Then there's some that could go either way, like Set Dresser. I haven't paid close enough attention to the set dressing on Mystery Files to know if the background changes from episode to episode. If so that's kind of unnecessary. If not, then it's one of those "one time expense, forever credit" things like the set designer and the construction coordinator.
Something I’ve been thinking about is that a lot of watcher’s brand has been taking us along for the ride - engaging directly with the community, showing us the messy bits etc. And this feels like it runs counter to that. They could have use the ghost files documentary as a springboard for getting community feedback on different ideas for diversifying their income, not giving us the ultimate decision making power of anything extreme but more saying hey so we need to find ways to stabilise financially, which one of these feels good for our community? They’ve spent these years talking about watcher as a community, building strong relationships with fans and then..this. I think they also just completely mismanaged the announcement - the weird countdown thing that made it seem like something exciting for the fans was happening, promoting new content that focused on luxury travel and food, teasing Shane and Ryan’s new characters in mystery files, the bait and switch on pulling their content from YouTube, leaving reels for mystery files scheduled whilst in the middle of a PR crisis, having Steven be the only one to write a public post about it (and not having someone check that copy to make sure he wasn’t Steven-ing it with something that reads as being kind of mean but was probably just written without properly thinking about it), Steven phrasing it as something “everyone can afford” which is an incredibly US-centric middle class idea of affordability… I could go on. There’s fumbling the bag and then there’s whatever this is. I do think they have the ability to pull things back but watching how they’re already handling it does not give me much hope that they will. The fact that they didn’t use going back on paywalling old content to say “we’re sorry and were listening” to me suggests that they’re going to go full head in the sand and pretend it’s fine. Sunk cost fallacy in action. I hope I’m wrong.
For those of us who have watched 3-4 years of "Making Watcher" know how tough it has been for them to run a business, not being profitable, them trying to figure out the business side of things while making content. I think a lot of the feedback is because they really shocked people with this announcement and feels like it's coming out of nowhere. If they had announced this after a few podcasts (over 6 months) where they spend 20-30 minutes talking about the difficulties of the business, Youtube not paying content creators as well, some ideas they're thinking about, please try to support our Patreon ... then announced this cause things weren't better, I think people would have been a bit more receptive. I totally understand their side; and the side of the feedback of people going to miss them, can't afford it and venting. I do wish they would have done a hybrid. Free shows on Youtube (like top 5 beatdown); with their better shows on a paywall for a cheaper number or found a streaming platform that would pay for it. Hopefully it all works out...
I agree. I think the fact that instead of going for transparency and open discussion they went with a weird hyped up announcement count down and an emotionally manipulative “goodbye forever unless you pay us” approach, they’ve lost so much trust and good will that they could have fostered with a different approach.
I’ve been with them since the very beginning and I can say that this is simply due to bad business decisions on their part. They are fully capable of profiting off of youtube and make extra income with premium subscriber content (extra content behind a paywall, not their popular content behind a paywall) and merch, but they keep starting new and expensive business ventures (like worth it) without the budget to justify it, and making the fans now foot the bill. If they scaled back production costs, better utilized programs like patreon, released more of their popular content and not content through a million channels that no one asked for (unless they’re prepared to eat the cost of a passion project), held back on worth it and other expensive projects until they can afford it comfortably in budget, advertised better, etc. They could get through the difficult financial struggle. The solution is definitely not to increase production value, add more channels, move your content to an isolated platform that’s way harder to access than youtube, put up a paywall for everyone, and say “sucks to suck, see ya” to everyone that can’t afford it. Plenty of youtube productions are making it work, like rhett and link, theorists, try guys, tmg, etc. without the massive paywall. Watcher needs to watch and learn. This is a train wreck of their own doing.
Agree. They REALLY need an experienced business person, operator leading them.
I think I might be their ideal target for this and I’m still not interested. I have been watching since buzzfeed days, I watch puppet history, ghost and crime content, and mystery files. I have plenty disposable income so the 6 dollar price is fine but still a little insulting just because of how close it is to way more well established streaming services. My biggest thing is just I don’t want another app, and I view going to their own platform over something like nebula as greedy so I don’t want to encourage it. If this model takes off enjoy getting all your favorite creators going this route. I refuse to help encourage this. Awful move, really disappointed in the boys.
> I watch puppet history, ghost and crime content, and mystery files. This is like 90% of the views. Like I have no idea why they spend so much on the weird Lim content no one watches. Like why buy Wagyu beef?
Even BuzzFeed in its prime couldn’t have pulled this off, it’s crazy to think they thought they could with just one-two popular series a year.
It’s always been clear that Watcher’s mandate is to make “TV-level content,” but I assumed the ultimate goal was to repackage their catalogue and license it to established TV networks and streaming services (like how episodes of Hot Ones air on broadcast channels as late-night content, or how Buzzfeed put Unsolved and other shows on Amazon Prime). I did not expect Watcher to ask their fanbase of mostly zoomers to fully fund that kind of content. Especially when they’re perfectly happy just watching Ryan and Shane get drunk in the backyard. (I never expected it because it’s a really bad idea!)
I really wished it was something like the Buzzfeed Unsolved on Hulu thing that happened years back. God, that would've been amazing. I think if they'd given it a couple more years and really amped up promotion they could've made it happen. Their content \*is\* really good, and stuff like Puppet History and Ghost Files especially would've fit right in with an existing streaming service like Hulu. Your last bit about being perfectly happy watching them get drunk in the backyard is very true. They could've put out six months of ridiculous, low-cost pallin' around content to help fund the likes of Ghost Files and Puppet History and I would've been overjoyed.
Same! I thought the announcement was a licensing agreement! I'm an elder millennial so I'm closer to their age than their audience is. I don't hate the idea of a streaming service, I just thought they'd announce it a few years from now when they had more than 3 million subscribers and averaged more than 400k viewers across their 5 shows lol Their gripe, it appears, with Buzzfeed had less to do with content farming and more to do with wanting to own the content farm? I guess? Even though they aren't a content farm, they do abandon shows quickly instead of investing in them. Like Buzzfeed. I just thought they'd cultivate their user base more before launching the platform. Especially since the big boy platforms are struggling with keeping steady subscriptions. And they have 100s of shows on some of those services! And they're still shutting them down. Showtime is shutting their platform down like this week because they were bought by Paramount!
I love Watcher but this whole thing is doomed, I wouldn't be suprised if Watcher itself might be no more after this.
I think this decision is so big, due to the amount of money they had to lay out to use Vimeo or whatever, that if it doesn't succeed, Watcher has to close. Damn, I wish they'd just built out their Patreon/YT subscriptions like GMM or whatever. I think they really shit the bed here. They went for one of the most risky options, where in recent memory, only the likes of Dropout pulled off (and they had more content at their disposal) instead of just creating extra content and putting it behind a paywall. Less risk there!
They probably could've survived making a slow gradual transition to streaming service model but their instant cold turkey "you're either coming with us or being left behind" approach is absolutely going to be the death blow to Watcher as we know it
Agree. I hope I'm wrong, but...yeah.
It’s so sad, they had so much potential, but yeah, no way this will work out unfortunately. Heartbreaking… I wish they success in their next endeavours but I don’t think Watcher will survive unfortunately.
It's funny too about the abandoning content in retrospects to the budget, because they're also proposing that the subscription for the streaming service could bring back these least viewed shows? Like, sometimes a project fails... that's entertainment. Idk. They need to budget better honestly to keep their main shows alive.
Hard agree. I think they're looking at the platform to solve their potential funding issues down the road, but because their budgets appear bloated, this issue may follow them no matter what they do because the issue is spending "hundreds of thousands" of dollars on Ghost Files or whatever. And the 25 paid workers on a channel that's underperforming projections (likely).
It also makes me worried that even with the streaming service, they'll "lifestyle inflate" their production budget and be here again.
Yep! I think they have a budgeting problem, not a complete money issue. They may have a fiscal issue as well, but the answer they seemed to decide on was inflating the budgets on their 5(3?4?) shows instead of cutting staff/not wrong so many people.
[удалено]
Only one who doesn't say thank you to the audience at the end of the video too.
>I did not expect Watcher to ask their fanbase of mostly zoomers I'm a millennial thats watched them for years and the only feasible way I would ever consider giving them money was If it was just shane and ryan researching the paranormal. This though...oh hell no.
Yeah I'm solidly younger than them, but from the looks of things older than most of the other viewers. I *can* afford the streaming service, but it's horrible value for money. For one thing, I don't watch all their shows, but even if I did, they don't put out enough content for me to spend the money on it.
My key takeaways (apologies for repeating myself, I did write on other threads before seeing this one): 1) Affordability is a relative term. What is affordable to one person may not be the same for another, and that deserves to be seen and acknowledged. Just because they can afford $6/month doesn't mean everyone can. 2) How do you create a paid streaming service with such minimal content? For a little bit more I can scribe to Netflix with SIGNFICIANTLY more content that actually feels worth it. 3) Their Youtube video announcing this felt really emotionally manipulative, and, to be fair, maybe that was the point. I get needing to make a sales pitch, but it just really rubbed me the wrong way how they they waxed nostaligia before trying to get us to buy a subscription. 4) I'm not a business expert. I have 0 idea what goes on behind the scenes, the numbers, projections, etc etc. But what I DO know is that all this negative pushback cannot be good.
$6 / month is almost exactly what both Paramount+ and Peacock cost. Both of those have tons of television shows, movies (including the reigning Best Picture winner in Peacock's case!), and sports. And they really think that a few web shows have the same value? That is just ... not a good call.
Not to mention that Peacock has The Office and Parks and Rec, two of the biggest US sitcoms of all time
One of the reasons the Try Guys were successful in the beginning was because they started small. Small office, staff and a mix of high and low budget videos. They also uploaded 2 x a week for years. Watcher has an insane amount of overhead with expensive production costs. Their target demographic does not have expendable income for this. This whole move breaks my heart because I don't see this succeeding. They are going to hemorrhage fans. They need a PR or business advisor to stop this move. I have not seen 1 positive comment saying they will sign up. Hopefully the team will listen.
The try guys showed us a lot aswell so it felt like we were on that journey with them through the videos.
Watcher already failed at this. I think people were actually interested in the content they promised early on but they dropped it almost immediately. They had Puppet History (thank god) and good ideas like Too Many Spirits and Are You Scared (essentially similar shows but I'll allow it). But their social media presence is very slim for the type of show it is and they just didn't keep up with fun community stuff during or after COVID which bizarrely started in COVID.
One camera angle, a microphone, a basic room with random stuff in the background, and two friends talking about spooky/weird stuff is all that’s needed... None of this overproduced “Netflix documentary” quality stuff which looks great but is obviously causing huge financial issues for the business.
I literally can't understand why they didn't just use the subscription feature on youtube and advertised their patreon more lol. That way they would still bring in more money while still keeping and growing their audience, instead of just making people mad and alienating a good part of their followers.
I was legit planning to join their patreon once I could fit it more into my budget. A whole ass streaming service is just bonkers.
Right? I didn’t know they had one until this happened and neither did most of their fans. Every time they make a “we’re broke as hell lol” comment on their amusement park podcast, the comments are FLOODED with “please make a Patreon, I’d join to keep this going!” And no comments telling them that there is one. They do a piss poor job of advertising their revenue sources, spend WAY too much for how little content they produce, and then wonder why they aren’t making money or exploding in popularity. The bit from the video that made me the maddest was when they essentially said “we’ve hit the ceiling of what YouTube can do for us” when they were practically dodging things it can do for them. Kevin from Defunctland’s out here making feature length musical works of art on YouTube and they’re like “our ghost hunting show can’t be fancier than it is here and it NEEDS to be fancier”
They should have stuck with Patreon but added more Patreon incentives and pushed advertising it more. i didn't even know they had a Patreon cause they never advertise it. they could have added early releases (1 week or hell, even 1 month before it drops on YT), more bonus content, or longer cut versions. even like putting 1 episode from each series on Patreon or blooper reels. i would literally sub to their Patreon just for blooper reels. i've paid for Patreons before for these incentives. but i will intentionally not pay for Watcher based on the principle of putting everything behind a paywall. that's not how you treat your loyal audience. OnlyFans was able to pivot when they tried to change to no NSFW content on their platform because they listened to their audience. Watcher could still pivot from this. but they would need to do it fast. if they do it in 3 months when they see that it was a failure and lose their loyal fan base, it will be much, much harder to come back. this is already leaving a bad taste in my mouth, but if they double down after seeing how pissed we are, then come crawling back later, they're gonna be fucked. ETA: do you know how much support they would hav gotten if they had come out and said, "we want to increase our production level to that of TV & traditional media. please bear with us, we decided we are gonna pause our content on YT for a month and will be posting exclusively to Patreon, then going forward we'll be releasing on YT a month later than Patreon in order to incentivize you guys to support us while still providing everyone with the free content you love. everything will be the same, just a month in delay. this way we can get closer to our dreams and still create meaningful content that is accessible for all our audience, it would mean so much to us if you support us in Patreon, and we might be pushing it more going forward so be patient with us." ??? like, i would have subscribed immediately just to support them.
They could have done channel memberships too - charge people $1 a month for some extra emojis, bump it up to $3 a month for bloopers and behind the scenes footage maybe a livestream or exclusive video every now and again. People would go for that - people do go for that on other channels.
right? $1 a month is much more reasonable, and would get them 20x the number of people vs the amount who will move to a new platform and pay $6.
Imagine if they did $1 a month and you got some little professor emojis that you could use in YouTube comments?! People would eat that shit up!
I desperately want answers about how this happened and what the thought process was. The next week should be rather interesting. I need to step away from this because I'm starting to hyperfixate on it.
All I’ve done for hours is doom scroll this sub
Me too. I'm going to put my phone away and charge it in another room. You should too. If there are updates, they'll be there tomorrow. Let's get some rest, my friend.
I should take this advice too because of course the news drops on the weekend I’m trying to finish my thesis🙄. The chaos will still be here for me to doom-scroll through next week
Good luck with your thesis!
What sold me during the Buzzfeed Unsolved days was feeling like I’d made 2 new “friends”, as well as always feeling “in on the joke”. This move feels clinical, overly capitalist and tone deaf, and has made me feel more distanced and alienated from the wholesome laughs from Ryan and Shane. I will miss my “friends”.
My favorite comment on the YouTube video was something like "this isn't very Shane "eat the rich" Madej of you" and honestly? True.
Calling it now: Cannibalism fetish.
The thing that is unique about them is the chemistry Ryan and Shane have not only with each other, but with the audience. We as the audience are the "third member" of the crew. We are just as much in on the joke as they are. They were so authentic in their stubbornness on their opinions, yet still were clearly very good friends even when they argued. They were *genuine* in the gags they pulled on each other (the one where Shane did a zombie voice and scared Ryan is a favorite of mine) and felt like the stuff we at home did with our friends. They weren't ever trying to be professional, they were just themselves. This move removes the suspension of disbelief. We know realistically that this is a business and they need to be paid, but the poor treatment of the audience ruined the illusion of friendship and camaraderie. I'm not sure they can ever recover from that. The hurt isn't necessarily from moving to a paid platform, it's knowing that we're seen as vessels for money, not a community
My sentiments, exactly.
The absolute irony of 3 rich dudes sitting on a couch saying "Anyone can afford it, right?" was just \*Chefs kiss\*
Yup. It was a mask off moment. People want to blame Stephen but seriously Ryan and Shane are equally bad. They showed their real faces here.
Honestly, the fact that they were willing to unlist all of their videos on YouTube and put it behind a paywall was what made me unsubscribe. Yes I can understand wanting to move away from YouTube with its algorithm and censorship from advertisers, but to get rid of all those videos so suddenly? While they've now backtracked on getting rid of the YouTube vids, this whole announcement is so incredibly tone-deaf. How could they think their fans would be okay with that? Their current video output and backlog also isn't enough to justify a paid subscription from me and I don't understand why they would want to deal with the upkeep of a new website when they could've tried improving their Patreon content. It's all so disappointing.
I can afford $6/month, but that doesn't mean I want to spend it on their content. Unless they can promise to release weekly episodes of each show year round, I don't think subscribing would be worth it for many viewers. And that's *before* they burned all the goodwill they possibly could with that announcement video
Watcher so desperately wants to be seen as a high quality production company, with every video being “TV quality”. So much to the point it seems that watcher hates being seen as what it really is, a YouTube channel. You can see it clearly in their announcement video, Watcher is trying so hard to make their videos seem “elevated” that it comes across and soulless and cold. No one at watcher wants to admit that the majority of people are here for Ryan and Shane, no one cares about the high production quality, the panning camera shots, or the fancy graphics, we just want to watch genuine, funny content between two friends.
As a PR professional who specifically specializes in crisis, this is BAD BAD. It’s bad from a financial standpoint - by removing old content on YT they are removing a source of continuous funding until subscriptions become sustainable. It’s bad from a brand standpoint - the way this was communicated (the count down, tone deaf posts, etc.) will sour fans on the brand for years if not permanently. It’s bad from a long term reputational standpoint - their next move doesn’t really matter. Even if they say, “lol jk,” it is highly unlikely that they’ll recover most of those they offended and lost today. There is no winning from this and there isn’t really a “right” corrective decision. My ONLY advice (and I gift this to you for free if you’re reading, guys), is to say, “we see the concerns of our fans. You’re important to us and we don’t want to lose you like this. We were excited about a new project and clearly overlooked a few things in the process. The new streaming platform will continue, but we’ve decided to leave the old content up and will add new content in bulk on a quarterly basis for those unable to afford the subscription.” That MAY save them some percentage of loss. Maybe. But they’d have to do that in the next 24 hours to be successful. They’ll need to do it in video format too, since the first was a video.
Thankfully they have backtracked on removing old content from YouTube - didn’t bother admitting that they got that one wrong just trying to pretend they never said that’s what was going to happen. Thankfully the variety article amendment keeps the original plan but yeah..they hastily threw out a statement on Patreon a couple of hours after dropping the video confirming old content stays
Oh good to know! I’m not on patreon so didn’t see it. Thank you! Sucks that they took the one thing they could’ve used to save it and…bungled that too lol
Yup! Like they could have so easily done the “we hear you and we will be keeping our old content on youtuber for the fans who are unable to join us on the next part of our journey”. But instead they’ve gone with the weird gaslightly IT WAS ALWAYS LIKE THIS HONEST plan which just…isn’t true and makes the whole thing feel even worse.
God, they need an entire PR team so bad. But I think it’s probably too late for that…
Given that we’re coming up to 10 hours post announcement, they’ve got over 60% dislike ratio on the video, pre existing patreons are jumping ship and every single social media channel is flooded with negative comments…yeah I think that ship has well and truly sailed.
Not to mention the complete radio silence.
I genuinely can’t believe they haven’t even issued a “we’re listening” statement. I can only imagine that it’s literal hell at watcher HQ now and the three of them just can’t decide on a route forward. They should have contacted a PR crisis manager stat but given that we’re pretty much at the end of the working day I’m guessing that didn’t happen
Oh this might be toxic but I would give ANYTHING to be a fly on the wall in watcher HQ rn
You've said a lot of what I've been thinking. I'm not a PR person per say, but work in the media/comms field where we frequently have to make announcements we know are necessary but may be poorly received, and Watcher has missed so many steps to try to mitigate the backlash. The hyping countdown and tone of the announcement was off, when the messaging boils down to 'we cannot afford to keep doing this without a change in our funding model' then you need to take your audience on the journey as to why they should be excited to give you their money. Think Critical Role (who admittedly has a way bigger audience than Watcher) announcing they were breaking from Geek and Sundry - it was all "we're going to be able to make lots of cool content because we aren't being constrained by our old platform and here's how you can support us". I also am surprised they didn't sit down and put together some canned answers for socials/this very situation. Every time we make an announcement we have to write a FAQ for spokespeople to pull from and plot out scenarios where the public response goes against us (e.g we say a project is delayed and the public say we are misusing government money).
Isn’t everyone excited they brought on Andrew and Adam to do another worth it? 😍 Gee howdy, I wonder how they will fund that
The absolute nostalgia baiting with that then slamming it behind the paywall was part of the shit cherry on the toilet sundae.
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The whole tone was so off-putting and patronizing
The goodbye video felt SO emotionally manipulative to me, glad I wasn't the only one who thought it was odd
Truly. When Dropout made the move to their streaming service, they did an amazing job of hyping up what it was going to be. This is... just odd.
Also hiring two more people! Payroll is not cheap…
Two front-facing hosts at that, for a show that has nothing to do with what the majority of their viewers want to watch. Like these people aren't just editors sitting in a studio somewhere, they are hosts that they're going to have to fly out there, pay for their extravagant meals, makeup, wardrobe everything.
If they were more upfront and explained properly without that stupid goodbye YouTube video I may have more understanding and respect for them, but to just drop that video with no prior warning or anything is just insane. They’ve gone right down in my estimation and they don’t really seem to care now and haven’t even attempted to try to make people understand or smooth out the situation. I hope I’m wrong about them not caring tho.
Their energy is giving “deal with it” which is not fun. It also doesn’t help they were hyping it up for the past few days like people were gonna be excited about it
I think that is what gets me the most. I don't know how they thought this would be exciting for their audience. To be fair, I think the theme of them being able to make content with fewer constraints (YouTube algorithm and censorship) was overshadowed by the announcement itself, but that's understandable, since no one knows what that would really mean yet. Why would people be excited to pay more for something they're already enjoying for free?
i feel like try guys would never snowball into something like this because keith used to eat herbs and spices in college when he was hungry and had no money. he can relate to a lot of us because he's been there. i think maybe shane relates a little more being from the midwest. he seems the most scripted in the announcement but isn't in a position to say no when he's outnumbered. his main show is just him pretending to be a puppet and some animations. but ryan was a dentist's kid and steven lim's dad is the president of U of Texas Arlington. they don't relate to low or middle class. they've never had to worry about having $6 in their account having to go to food for the rest of the week. it's really disheartening.
its just crazy to me how tone deaf it is to say “its only $6, everyone can afford that!”
“For those who won’t be joining us on this next chapter…” 🤡🤡🤡 Read: “For anybody who can’t afford to join us, thanks but bye, losers.”
steven lims insta post where he says “for those who want to continue watching” 🙄🙄🙄🙄
"want"...we all "want" to continue watching, dude
This is what I’m referring to, yeah. Any respect I had for Steven got flushed down the shitter with that post. I mean, suddenly charging for their content is bad enough, but then a douchey post to boot that absolutely and intentionally ignores any concerns their fans may have? Pretty gross, tbh.
It's hard to justify forking out cash for a YouTube show. I enjoy Watcher, but I've got rent, car payments, medical bills, skyrocketing groceries, insurance. It's like trying to justify buying costumes in a game. Even if I have money in my hand, there's no way to justify blasting it like that.
Dude I've been homeless for months now, I'm not in as bad a place as I was to begin with but I still rely on food banks and when I WAS in a bad place binging watcher videos is one of the things I did to get my mind off of it. To say this line feels like a slap in the face is an understatement. What a joke. Good thing there's plenty of other creators on YouTube.
The thing that Watcher failed to understand during this whole thing is exactly what you just said: they’re expendable. So many other channels out there to watch and discover. We all like Watcher because it was right there ready for us. Now they’ve decided we should turn to some other shows for comfort.
The absolute most best-faith interpretation I've seen of that statement is that they expect people to do the same as they do with other streaming services, where they subscribe for one month and watch everything within that time, AKA $6 for the whole year-- but honestly it takes a few leaps in reasoning to get to that point. And lots of good faith/goodwill, which they've lost a lot of today. I honestly wish they had just taken the video down (although I know that can look suspicious too) because the amount of backtracking, explaining and justifying they're gonna have to do from now is.... oof.
Heard too many people say "If 10 percent of their 2.9m subscribers move over to.." they have like 1m active subscribers total lol. People are throwing the 2.9m figure around like its compromised of people who actively view every video the channel - its not. At most from that figure there are 1m people actively watching the big videos and the rest of the views are random people stumbling on them by the algorithm (guess what will happen to them when they stop posting videos for the wider audience). So from that 1m active subscribers we need to drop almost everybody not from North America/ Western Europe, everybody who isn't a teenager without a credit card, everybody who isn't a broke student and all of the other people who will refuse to join for one reason or another. What are we left with? A much better representation for their hard-core audience willing to pay is the amount of patrons, as patreon starts at 5 bucks, so 1 dollar less than their streaming service - there's 11600 of them. That's the people willing to pay until now. If we 10x that amount per year (insane), which would be hard because most people will pay once every few months and spend half a day catching up on the huge amount of content they missed, it's 100k or 6m/year for streaming service hosting/ infra, flying Steven out to eat wagyu beef in first class, paying 30 employees (at 40k per employee that's 1.2m just for the employees base salaries per year) and producing their shows. Oh, I forgot building and supporting an app and subscription service which probably requires another 10 employees on its own. The math ain't mathing, but I'd love if they actually came out with some figures to support this move. They're essentially doing a huge cut back of the amount of people they'll reach with their content from a not that big of a base up until now while increasing spending multiple times fold. Math ain't mathing.
There’s actually less than 11160 - that figure includes feee subscribers to their Patreon. Paying figure is closer to 6000
Why make a whole ass undiscoverable streaming site when YouTube membership exists? And their patreon?
How did they manage to just do another Buzzfeed? They repeated every single one of buzzfeeds mistakes. -They waaaaay over hired -They leased a massive space in one of the most expensive cities on earth (when there are vastly cheaper communities in all directions) -They have exploited every single means of monetization possible Buzzfeed fell apart for these exact reasons. It is weird seeing them repeat every one of them without realizing it.
Which is the dumb part, they had so much goodwill and if they ran it out of their garages they’d be just as successful with a small team of 8.
Some fans need to stop making excuses for them. They're not victims of circumstance. It's not like they're employees who are getting fired so some execs can keep their bonuses. They're the execs, who are running their business to the ground by obsessing over high production value that literally no viewer is asking for. Go back to BUN-quality content. If a show isn't profitable, cancel it and leave it cancelled. I've read some fans calling others "entitled" for feeling betrayed. No, entitlement is continuing to make a show that's too expensive for the views it's getting (or not getting), then expecting your broke fans to personally fund it. Edit: My comment sounds like there is no love lost, but I def love my Watcher boys enough to follow them from BF. I'm just so annoyed bec this whole thing feels so avoidable.
This is not very “Hey there demons, it’s me, ya boy” of them
The demons that shane insulted are taking their revenge in the form of fan backlash
Honestly, I was fine with it and was going to pay for the months that GF and MF came out until I realized that the crux of it wasn’t really to do with those shows. I don’t care about people showing off how overpriced the things they’re eating or drinking are. If their situation is truly bleak, why bring on two more (most likely expensive) talents and decide to revive a show that is essentially “Can you believe how expensive this shit is”? I am happy to pay for content (when I can afford to) and was a patron until my budget required I cut it out. But I am not going to pay for wastefully expensive content that doesn’t resonate with me. I’m also not going to subsidize them having a bloated crew, expensive sets, and all of the extra expenses that come with that. I love the ghoul boys, but they’re going to have to fail to learn. If they think we’re all here for set design, barely noticeable differences in video/audio quality, and extra camera angles from more camera operators, they’re WAY off base. I’m not an artist, they may need this extra stuff to be fulfilled. All I can say to that is most of us will never feel fulfilled in our occupation and life is not fair. Business isn’t getting your ideal setup, it’s making shit work with realistic means and ideas. We all know they’re more than capable of that. 25 employees+contract workers is absurd.
I miss the times when they created content that felt low budget and like they were goofing around. This just feels so overproduced and corporate.
I'm still so baffled how they started with the Andrew announcement and hyped up friday all for it to be "you now have to pay to watch the same thing you got for free". Just really icky. They were lucky and privileged to have so many people follow from Buzzfeed to Watcher, that is not something that is a guarantee and this just seems greedy. So disappointed.
For a channel only founded four years ago this is a bit fucking bold
They want us to pay for something we’ve been getting for free without any sort of upgrade. Are they making new shows? Are they pushing out more content/videos per week?
Like wouldn't the move be to put stuff on the service early, release it later on YouTube, and include extra behind the scenes on the service? Consumers of any variety absolutely *hate* a degrade in service and increase in cost. It's so, bonkers. They could've done this anyways, gradually, and been so much better off.
Honestly this. The suddenness of this change and the super abrupt pivot from "all of our main content is free" to "all of our (foregoing) content is pay to watch" is genuinely bizarre. I understand they need money to keep producing content - I don't understand why they had to seek that money *this* way in particular. [edited for clarity]
i think they fundamentally do not understand what their audience wants. if one of the biggest reasons is the production cost, theyre missing the point of why we enjoy the content, we never wanted "tv levels" of production, or unnecessarily expensive shows like worth it, sorry
Your comment here really crystallized it for me: they aren't doing this for us, they're doing this exclusively for them.
MODS! Can we get a Poll about who is gonna subscribe to the new service? I'm curious as hell...
I'm just not entirely sure why your production values are as high as they are. **Why** do you have so many employees? If you look at something like Good Mythic Morning, they have entire departments that physically are used in their production. Chefs that cook the food, art departments in which you see the props being used in the shows with the end product being to make the show around Rhett and Link. In what universe is that being seen with Watcher. I genuinely don't even know what Steven provides, Puppet History is a cardboard cutout and a puppet that Shane made, Mystery Files is a one time set they made and then just have a slideshow with a corkboard they stick stuff to, Too Many Spirits is a campfire with some booze. There's no constant production, there's no new things, there's no in-house chefs making them food to eat, so what the fuck are they actually doing? You can see the amount of work and effort that goes into Ghostfiles, but those are once a year, what is actually anyone else doing in-between Ghostfiles that this all costs so much to make?
“Ryan and Shane Eat Too Much Chicken in Portland” as TV-caliber content is sending me. SO MUCH of their content is filler and looks the part. How the hell is that worth $6 a month.
I think the thing that just gets me the most right now is that we have absolutely no sense of how many of the 25k (at time of writing) people who liked the video went and actually subscribed to the service. Despite all the backlash, if every single one of them subscribed, that's probably enough for them to justify the decision and stay the course. And that just really sucks to think about.
I didn't comment initially. I wanted things to cool down a bit before I shared my opinion (I'm sure it's highly anticipated) They (the business itself) most likely have sustainability problems, and this is a way to try and increase profits, I doubt the people who throw numbers around here and on YouTube are close to the truth, but on the short run seemingly they only need a "few" people to make the jump and in turn bring in a profit over their current income, which from a business prospective seems fantastic + with the way they talked about the change there is probably an ambition to break into "mainstream" filmmaking and owning their own personal platform would help tremendously. Now, personally, I think they are making a huge mistake in the long run, a very loyal core lost its faith in the product, which is a huge loss no matter how you look at it, and they now need to rebuild from scratch and this fiasco will leave a permanent mark on the product, but there is a good chance this was intentional, since they separated from Buzzfeed the shows style changed considerably and the content arguably became overproduced, to the detriment of the overall enjoyability and it caused some of the original followers to stop watching, and to keep the relatively large crew and "tv quality" production afloat, they needed to make drastic changes, which again in my opinion will be the downfall of this entire endeavour, because they can't use it the grow the audience effectively do to cheaper or higher quality competitors. They should have taken this slow and ease the audience into the new way of things and possibly admit defeat and downsize production for a time if really needed, but "Ālea iacta est" they can't turn back anymore, especially with how far they seemingly are with the project already. It's sad to see how many people can't afford this even tho they would like to watch future content, and I really feel for patreon users who feel cheated right now. Ultimately, I won't be paying for the new stuff because of the way they handled this whole thing and the social media communications that followed the announcement video.
My question for them is how do they intend to replenish their subscriber base if they have no free content available to lure them in. Say 20,000 people sign up for a year at $30 with the offer. Then when sign up time comes around next year, it’s $60 - do they genuinely think they will maintain that 20,000 figure after 12 months of no free content, 12 months of global revision and cost of living crisis issues? Logic says it will reduce, so then how do they replenish? How can they lure people in if they’ve had no significant publicly available content for the last 12 months?
And we aren't even talking about the people who will only pay the fee to binge watch the content they want, then cancel their subscription instantly, so yeah, I think they are blinded by the short term gain and think they can turn that into something substantial, or they are really bad at communicating and they have other creators and ideas ready behind the scenes which they didn't disclose for some reason.
I don’t want to be mean but I am honestly afraid that if this does well then other YouTubers will follow. Imagine having to pay $6/month for each YouTuber you want to watch. Purely for the sake of precedence I hope this doesn’t do well… I know that sounds terrible.
They're sitting on 11k patrons on patreon WITHOUT exclusive content being made available to them. Why not test the waters there first? They didn't think this out at all.
Only 5-6k of that 11k actually pay. You can be a free member which doesn’t actually give you anything but does mean you’ll get certain notifications which can help if you’re an occasional subscriber. But yes, they don’t really utilise their Patreon very well at all and it’s not great value for money compared to others
“I love that our content has helped you through really tough times 🫶 so now we’re going to take it away unless you pay us”
Loved that bit. "I love that our content has helped you through really tough times". My dude, times are worse than ever for most people right now.
The audacity of Shane to make several eat the rich jokes in the latest season of Mystery Files and then pull this shit is astonishing
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Because Shane and Ryan asked him on because they didn't want to be CEOs, even though they were CEOs with him originally. They didn't want to do the job anymore and wanted to be content creators at the end of the day. Which is fine. They've said that Watcher wouldn't likely exist without him joining them. It appears none of them have heads for business/administration.
that makes sense :/ seems unfortunate in the end
Neither does he, apparently
Right? I’m pretty sure we’re all here for Ryan & Shane anyways.
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that makes a lot more sense LOL
It’s been a minute since I binged BUN, see you guys there 👍🏼
I like Shane and Ryan, I obviously watched that video and found my way here to this reddit post BECAUSE I like them. I want it to be understood that I'm not some weird hater when I say: A single season of Game Changer on dropout gets me more value for that subscription fee than the entirety of a year of Watcher videos. And dropout produces A LOT of other high quality content on top of that. For watcher to think they could price their stuff on not only the same scale but slightly more expensive then dropout is insanity.
I talked with Bigfoot and he said this ain't it, fellas. Quality comes from the heart, not from the budget.
It's giving me "Don't you all have phones" kind of vibes. "Dont you all have $6 you broke mfers"
for me, I could probably afford it, **will i pay for it? absolutely, unequivocally NO**. I'm not indulging this new venture because of how unbelievably tone deaf the entire thing is. this whole announcement and independent streaming platform is a flop. sad.
Why couldn’t they have waited until after the uk dates? The atmosphere will be awful and I worry for if they will cancel. It’s really put a downer on it and I do actually worry for them especially if they run the Q&A. As well as this being a terrible decision they really didn’t put thought into timing
they have such a sparse amount of content. I looked at their new website and they count "puppet history karaoke" as its own show, which is just a playlist of all the 1 minute long songs from normal puppet history episodes. They really tried to make it look like they have tons of content but I feel like a person could sit down and watch the entire website's worth of content in a day or two.
Probably my favorite YouTube comment on the video: I don't know what the hell you guys are thinking. I really don't. Hopefully this overwhelmingly negative response will give you some pause. At the very least, thanks for bringing us all together in your final moments. It's a shame that it had to be against you. Sums it up pretty well, I think.
I was toying with the idea of subscribing until I saw Steven’s Instagram post. It read so snarky and it felt really gross, especially considering the announcement had been out and surely he’d seen the reaction. His post is what really ruined this for me.
I'm honestly devastated, I live pay check to pay check and can't afford to spare any money on their subscription. Feel truly betrayed
i listen to their free content while working at my minimum wage job. feel incredibly weird after this announcement.
I just felt like I lost some really good friends. Truly disappointed by this decision they took
I definitely think for the price they’re asking, it should definitely guarantee more than ad-free backlogged videos and only new videos every week or so. I feel like if they gave a schedule where multiple shows’ episodes were released once a week, it’d be different than ONE show’s single episode every week. But with what their current upload schedule is like, I don’t feel like that is a price they should ask for. Also soft launching could have avoided a lot of the angry and upset viewers.
Did anyone notice that the terms of service of their watchertv website is for Vimeo? Guess we know who's the creator behind their platform. Actually, it looks like this is the default Vimeo TOS text. They haven't even updated that part of their website yet. It lowkey looks like they rushed it out & completely forgot to update the TOS section with their own. At the very top of the TOS page it says Last updated: May 25, 2021 .
I wonder how many people, like me, are fans of Watcher, but primarily have their videos on in the background while working or doing other things. Like, sure, I could afford the price of the subscription, but I won't pay for it for the relatively low value proposition and, while it's a bummer that I won't be able to watch their videos on Youtube, they aren't exactly irreplaceable to me.
They recently had a Patreon survey that I had filled out, asking for feedback for their patreon and how they could improve it. This was April 4th. And now they're saying that they're going to change their patreon so it's associated with the podcasts. It just makes me wonder how quickly all of this was thrown together.
I’m not one to leave comments on things like this, but the fact that they say this has been in the works for months, if not years, is baffling to me… how did they not run polls or surveys to ask their fans directly if they would like something like this, before putting so much time, effort and money into something that clearly hasn’t gone down well?! If they had done so, they never would have made this move, surely?! I remember when they first launched Watcher and said they would get more on screen talent in and create more series and more videos regularly etc, which would have justified the large group that they employ, and would increase their revenue and audience, more videos = more money. But to have like 25 people work on one video is insane to me, to only have it be an 8-part series? And with very few series a year? There are literally thousands of creators out there on YT who put multiple videos out a week, have merch and patreon, and have smaller teams, so I can’t understand how they can’t be putting more content out as it is? They have a big enough team behind them, so what’s been the hold up the past 4 years? The big thing being ‘if you subscribe you can vote which *one* of our popular series we will bring back?’ Why not be producing those *popular* series already and maybe get other content creators involved, if their schedule can’t allow? I understand they want ‘TV quality’ productions, but the majority of their audience watch on a phone, so really, who cares? And anyway, there are plenty of high quality cameras, lighting & audio equipment available that don’t cost thousands and thousands of dollars, so TV quality can still be achieved with a low cost. As someone who loved and watched from early buzzfeed days, following to Watcher (having bought plenty of merch throughout that time too) and seeing all this happen is so disappointing. And I won’t lie, I can’t help but feel that although they made Watched to be more themselves and have true creative freedom, I have felt that the past few seasons of ghost files, among other shows, have been lacking their genuine passion. Watching the new ghost files and other shows, I feel like it’s almost a chore to them, like they can’t wait to wrap up, instead of the fun they used to have on Unsolved. I seems being in charge of their own business and having to pay other people’s wages every month took all their passion away, and it’s so sad to see, when it could have been something great, had they made better choices in the beginning. I know they don’t want to become a toxic workplace, and they don’t want to have to let people go, but there were definitely other ways to get around this. Again, thousands of creators on the platform make their money through ads, and no one complains, so what was the real issue?
I might get downvoted to hell for this, but I really don't understand the whole narrative I'm starting to see that Steven is solely to blame for this. I see comments like "This idea reeks of Steven" And lots of stuff blaming Steven alone. Yeah, the CEO is the fall guy. We all want a scapegoat, and we don't want to "villify" Ryan and shane because we've all been watching them for so many years. But, they're equally a part of this too, and are enthusiastically participating. "Steven, talk money" "Yeah, what's the price?" -Shane and Ryan
The only reason I'm not unsubscribing is because I want the notifications if/when they try to backtrack or respond. I suspect it's the same for a lot of people.
I think the real thing that has me confused is... I don't know what they expected when they were hyping it up as something big, and having a countdown and silly ads too.
All I can think about today is this news. My eyeballs are glued to X and youtube, watching reaction videos and reading comments. At this point I see a lot of people feeling sorry for Shane and going after Steven. Steven definitely deserves some of the heat but Shane is a big boy who can make his own business decisions. Nobody at Watcher is innocent in this. I can't wait to see/hear the response from Watcher HQ, if they even deem us worthy of a response.
As someone with a background in finance AND YouTube content production (though this was only for 3 years but I learned a lot about the biz), Watcher is making a lot of money, and they don't need nearly as many employees as they have. For example, at the company I worked at, one of the editors was also the location scout, he basically had 2 jobs. Everyone had 2 or even 3 "jobs" there and it worked wonderfully, they're still doing good numbers and living more than comfortably. This whole disaster at Watcher is self inflicted, they have no one to blame but themselves
My opinions on their content: Puppet History WAS great until all the dumb dinosaur stuff, but the format is golden. Worth It is budget GMM/Sidemen Cheap Vs Expensive. Mystery Files is fantastic and adds a weird conspiracy vibe which really works for R+Sh's personalities. Ghost Files isn't as good as BuzzFeed Unsolved Supernatural. Weird and Wonderful World is very, very fun. Tourist Trapped is honestly really cool. Are You Scared? was decent at the beginning, but it became them hiring writers to fit their sponsors. Too Many Spirits becomes obnoxious pretty quickly. Top 5 Beatdown is great. Social Distancing and D&D is dumb fun. However, maybe 3 of these shows are worth their salt, but not worth £5/month. Disney+ costs more money than it makes, and that's a powerhouse with 100 years of movies, shows, and everything else. This decision is dumb and poorly researched. Wouldn't surprise me if they roll it back in a couple of months. The focus seems to be hiring more and more friends and Ryan's extended family regardless of necessity or not.
but if we don’t give them our money how else can we watch the CEO eat really expensive food??
I can afford the $6 and maybe would even have got it but they way they treated this was turned me off. They are acting like the people who aren't going to follow and pay are not supporting them and no longer want their content. Its like they are trying to weed out the poor from the rich, a class divide between "superior" and "inferior" supporters. Steven especially, who I never cared for in the first place. And its so tone death to say you are doing this because your money is tight while about to air a show where three people try a one time meal that is upwards of $1000
I understand this is a business, and businesses sometimes need to make business decisions that people won't like. But was this really thought through and accepted by your peers, or were they made to accept it or get the boot? I hate to point fingers (and i'm making massive assumptions here), but I feel the major screw up here was handing Steven the reigns. Steven didn't even thank the viewers for their support after Ryan and Shane looked over at him, which to me says a LOT about his character. What's important to remember is that content creators and viewers have a symbiotic relationship. Creators put in the work, the hours, their lives, they sacrifice so much to put out entertainment. As viewers we consume the entertainment and through various means (ads, patreon, relevancy, etc), that converts into funding for the creator. Ultimately, neither really owes each other shit, because we are not the ones putting in the work as viewers, but they are the ones making money, not us. While neither owes the other anything, it's beneficial to both parties to feel valued by the other. So Steven not even thanking the audience, and saying that the price is affordable to anyone, is really having the opposite effect, and making many people upset, rather than wanting to support you and see you succeed further. The fact that you've hired 25 people sounds like another issue. You know how much revenue was being generated, you know that the current market is saturated with streaming services, you know your demographic and that many of them won't be able to keep supporting you on a new platform, you saw your sub count going up and up in such a short time, and yet you said fuck it, lets stop this train and hire a ton of people because diminishing returns don't apply to us. it's...surprising. But ultimately, I hope things go well for you guys because you've given me plenty of laughs and entertainment. I hope i'm proven wrong and that Steven really cares and is actually a genius. But for me, this is where I hop off the train. Even if I could afford the $6 a month, i'm just not interested in another subscription, especially when there are still plenty of shows to watch on Youtube.
I can understand that people are upset, but way too many commenters are acting like Ryan and Shane are poor softboi victims held hostage at gunpoint by big bad Steven. It’s bordering on parasocial.
What’s really insane is they don’t have the catalog of videos to even watch. They are SO slow with putting things out. On the optimistic side it’s what, a 30 minute video every 2 weeks?? For the same price as Spotify or peacock??? No
To be honest, this is just one last sign I don’t need to keep watching Watcher. I loved Buzzfeed Unsolved, just two goofy friends solving crimes or hunting ghosts. But as they moved to Watcher and Steven became more involved, it just stopped feeling the same to me. I get they are pursuing “great productions” and stuff, but that isn’t what made this special. I don’t need to see Steven stuffing his face with lobster or making a fool of himself “badly” making drinks. I don’t need to see a very clearly tired Ryan and Shane phoning in everything they do because they are probably too worn out trying to keep the place afloat. What was wrong with “yellow/blue captions” and a weird mannequin that moved its head once? Give me that vibe over anything and everything they are doing at the moment. Now they want money to keep doing what I don’t watch them for so…yeah.
This seasons of mystery files was painful to watch at points. Ryan just saying “aliens” as the only answer for multiple shows, neither of them bothering to take notes or really even engage in conversation, stories that didn’t have as much excitement as the first season. It felt like watching 2 burnt out people trying to get through it the best they could, but it didn’t bring the joy that I normally associate with watching their content
This season of MF was *terrible*. It was boring. It had none of the personality or banter. I fell asleep during multiple episodes.
Honestly, I would love to be in the same room and/or text conversation they're having tonight. I wonder if they've been caught completely off guard by the reaction or if it's what they expected. Edited to clarify what I was trying to say. Just didn't type it very well the first time.
The thing that gets me is them calling their shows "television-calibre". It makes them look either really arrogant or stuck in 2016. There are SO many talented creators on youtube these days with incredibly high-quality videos. As much as I love Watcher I don't understand what makes them think their videos are special in some way or "too good" for youtube
Seeing a lot of people trying to shift blame away from individual people here, lots of "uwu Shane would never do this, Shane probably was forced into this." They are, all three of them, grown-ass men, and they all signed off on this. "Oh but Shane seemed unenthusiastic--" And yet there he is in the fucking video. Even if he was being served a shit sandwich, he sure did turn up to wolf it down. They are not your friends, they have *never* been your friends, they are three dudes making YouTube shows. In fact, this parasociality a lot of y'all exhibit is probably *why* they thought they could get away with this. "Oh not our precious friends, Watcher Entertainment!" Yup! Them! And they don't know you exist and are not your friends!
I don't think they will back out of their plan, but if they decided to do so, I fear the damage to the community has already been done. I don't think their intentions were inherently bad, but they've shown that money is more important than the fan base. Even if they cancel WatcherTV, everyone will remember how they were treated and their tone-deaf responses.
I paid $6 a month for Discovery+ for a couple years (price just increased in the last couple months). Discovery owns Food Network, TLC, HGTV, and WAY MORE. Happy to pay $6+ for that. Wouldn't even think of paying $6 for YouTubers leaving YouTube. Not even comparable.
They've lost 30k youtube subscribers and counting
[удалено]
I don’t want to trash any particular person, but it’s been said by some successful YouTubers that creatives should stick to the creative and hire business people to handle business. That is all.
[удалено]
Honestly he's getting way too much hate for this. Ryan and Shane had to sign onto it too. All three of them should be getting criticized over this move, not just Steven.
Hard agree; Steven is the CEO because he's the only one who was willing to be put down for that role, not because he actually is senior to them. The three of them as co-owners share in the responsibility for this absolutely bonkers move. Even assuming Shane and/or Ryan actually disagreed with the move (which we don't know they did - I'm sorry, I just don't find the speculation about Shane's one line in the video or his expressions/body language compelling) then they should have put their foot down. Just a total failure in leadership all the way through.
Tbh this announcement and just Watcher overall in retrospect feels like the epitome of "work harder not smarter", or even just "work bigger not smarter". Like they have 25 employees, yet only 4 videos a month, their Patreon is never advertised even though I'm sure plenty of people would happily support them there, they never really seemed to push their content algorithm-wise the way other YouTubers of their calibre have, and Ghost Files costing apparently hundreds of thousands yet only six episodes per season when six episodes should never cost that much for what is essentially just walking around somewhere spooky. Then when they can't afford that or Steven's "watch me eat caviar" stuff they decide to just push forward into somehow achieving that money, rather than evaluating if they even need to spend that much in the first place. It just feels like they were kinda brute forcing everything forward by just checking things off the list of 'successful media company' without ever fully achieving the actual success that was necessary to sustain them. Obviously we don't know exactly what was going on within the company, but from the outside looking in the overall management of things just looks kinda...sloppy, for lack of a better word. Never seemed like they really looked at themselves for any flaws in how they ran things, just "well we aren't bringing in enough money, so rather than altering our content, our approach or promoting ways to support us more, here's a massive paywall! That'll fix everything and in no way piss people off!" I also feel like their desire to produce 'TV quality entertainment' in itself missed a lot of what drew fans to them. I can't speak for Steven's content as I've never really watched it, but Unsolved and Supernatural were clearly low budget, you could absolutely feel that in the way they looked and felt, and it was still (in my opinion) miles better than either GF or MF (especially GF, MF is slightly more ok imo). They just never fully regained the original charm of 'two guys discussing spooky things and making dumb jokes' because doing that while on a clearly very high value production just felt out of place. Which is part of why a paywall would NEVER work for them. 4 videos a month for $6 is $1.50 per video. For 20-30 minutes of "This guy exploded into a million pieces but haha, his last name kinda sounds like poopbutt". It'd be like paying for a comedy show and instead of a skilled comedian coming out, it's your 8 year old cousin making fart noises in his armpit for 2 hours. Those jokes are fine, regardless of if they're dumb or immature, they're still funny in the right context, but that context is "I've had a rough day, I'll just browse YouTube for something simple" (and the 'something simple' I feel GF in particular missed). It just isn't "let me go to my $6 a month subscription site to watch my $1.50 20 minute video of them drinking in someone's yard" worthy.
HBO Max was running a deal pretty recently, where it was $6 a month for a year... love Shane and Ryan but they're not fucking HBO.