The Watcher misstep

[scooter]

Hooboy, this is still getting a lot of attention. Watcher, the YT channel founded by the BuzzFeed Unsolved guys fleeing that platform, misstepped into a huge controversy when they announced they'd be leaving YT and hiding behind a paywall of their own making, at $6/month (which "everyone should be able to afford"...)

On Monday they quickly apologized and retreated.

Some exceptional parasocial vibes going on here.

Anyone care to add to the frenzy on this matter?

[WolfofWords]

The first I heard of their reaction was when somebody brought it up on a Wendigoon stream.

Amanda from Swell Entertainment was exactly who I needed to charm in and she is on point.



Interesting that people are mostly blaming Steven and giving Shane and Ryan a pass. I mean, I'm also disinterested in the cooking shows but I like him as a performer. I feel like that's where a lot of the parasocial stuff comes in.

I also agree with Amanda that 25 employees is way too much. Obviously, they're friends with these people but they are doing no favors hiring a bunch of people they can't afford to pay.

My favorite of their shows is Puppet History which was done with love on the cheap by Shane. Watching him struggling to put on a show largely by himself was part of the charm.

Similarly, Ghost Files does not need a lot of people around from my perspective.

[scooter]

I mean, I did think this was a misstep and tone-deaf, and surprising but I didn't really have the visceral initial reaction that a lot of people had to it. I was pondering over the subscription fee and likely would have ended up deciding against it.

Even at the time, I was thinking that this was a very calculated move. They couldn't have thought that they were going to simply take the subscribers and just move them over to the paywall and not lose anybody. My feeling was they did the numbers and thought they could lose part of the subscription base - just sacrifice those guys - in exchange for the extra money they'd make off the rest. But at that point...I mean, really? That was the plan?

It struck me that they said they wanted to make TV-style content, which certainly makes sense...but then, wouldn't the next logical step be from YouTube to TV? If that was done, I'd understand it much better. At that point, you can make that calculation: "yeah, we've got two million on YT, but we're getting 50 million on Netflix..."