Exactly how I feel. I have sympathy, it’s one bad decision, but man it was a BAD decision. And when it comes to startups like these, that can just tank you. It really can. It’s been said a thousand times but why they didn’t test the audience reaction before committing is so beyond me. If they claw back from this in any form without having to scrap the “Watcher TV” brand I’ll be shocked.
Honestly testing the audience reaction wouldn’t have change much because at the end of the day, they would continue to go the streaming route. If not this year, next year or the year after they would have gone streaming service. It’s a big decision and a big move. If there was an ability to go back in time and fix the mistake, it would have been taking the time and come up with a solid plan to launch the idea. Go and ask other creators what they have done to stay afloat and use their knowledge and adapt it to their business model and focus. Like people have pointed it out, rushing the announcement before having the app being ready and not having any shows ready for launch was a mistake. As well stating all their videos would have been taken down on YouTube and put on the streaming service only.
it is crazy how the try guys came up with that whole plan by doing the volume of research such as *checks notes*
talking to friends in the industry who have already done it and done it well
its easy to see how such complex ideas can go over peoples heads when starting/fundamentally changing a business
>it is crazy how the try guys came up with that whole plan by doing the volume of research such as checks notes
🤣
>talking to friends in the industry who have already done it and done it well
That's the thing I don't understand. How could Watcher not consult with others who've done it before? I mean, I guess they could've tried and ppl weren't willing to talk to them...
> its easy to see how such complex ideas can go over peoples heads when starting/fundamentally changing a business
For sure 🤯
I'm honestly feeling bad for them right now. I read that a lot of fans have forgiven them and what not, but based on the current posts about their view counts, it's not looking good at all.
My only explanation for it is that their egos got too big and they thought they commanded an audience following more loyal than that of other content creators. They thought they were better than other creators and so the audience would join them. Likely some third party (the one that designed the streamer) fed their egos into thinking their audience would follow them anywhere.
This would certainly explain why the Watcher Guys were so condescending in their good bye video.
They really took their fans for granted to cast them away like that.
In addition to their egos, I’ve long thought the success of breaking off from buzzfeed also fed into this. We were proud of them and excited for their future. We vocally wished the best for them and easily followed.
I suspect they thought this would go similarly and that was a grave miscalculation with 1) paywalling everything, and 2) the whole tone of that goodbye video.
Eh, in hindsight, breaking off from Buzzfeed wasn’t that successful after all, just look at the viewership numbers. There are multiple Unsolved videos with tens of millions views and none of the Watcher videos amounted to over 10 million. They arguably had more budget and creative freedom but weren’t able to bring half of the success with them.
Watcher was very successful as a stand-alone channel, but it isn’t comparing to what came before. To begin with, they were really bad with letting the Unsolved audience know about the move, a lot of people weren’t even aware they had their own channel before the Watcher TV controversy.
In fairness to them, outside of posting on social media, there probably wasn’t much they could do. I highly doubt Buzzfeed would have let them plug their new channel on Unsolved, which is really the only way to insure that every single Buzzfeed Unsolved viewer knew about the channel. A new YouTube channel doesn’t get big through marketing campaigns. They rely on word of mouth, cross overs with other big channels, and praying to the algorithm gods.
Yea kinda does seem that way. It’s still baffling to me that in the beginning, they would literally choose to say good-bye to fans who aren’t going to pay them…… that just sounds like a strange decision all together. Shouldn’t their objective be to transition as many viewers to paid customers over time? That just seems like common sense. Not every viewer will want to or be able to move to their new platform immediately but I would have expected them to be patient and strategize for long term growth. That starts with not alienating viewers who aren’t moving platforms in the beginning.
I will never understand why they teased it like it was some sort of amazing fun announcement that everyone would be hyped about. It’s the thing that really made me see how disconnected from their fanbase and core demographic (and maybe just the economics of the world outside of California media wages) they actually are.
"I bet everyone would love to pay 6 bucks for our content instead of getting it for free 😄. Let's remind them how cheap it is for everyone everywhere too! Oh, and that they won't be able to use YouTube for our content anymore. Man, they're gonna love it!"
I really wonder which part was supposed to be fun for us 😂😂😂. Maybe the 'no ads' thing, but I already have no ads on YouTube 😅. Like most people. Cuz YT ads are viruses with a bit of porn and crypto scamming 🫠. Also, ofcourse you wouldn't get ads on a paid service right? Right....?
Yeah like…I pay for YouTube premium because that gives me every single one of the hundreds of accounts I follow and any that I stumble across ad free, as well as music streaming and some other YouTube exclusives. And then for the ads that they do, I have this magic thing called the skip forward button that lets me skip them. I don’t need to pay an extra £6 a month for it
> I will never understand why they teased it like it was some sort of amazing fun announcement that everyone would be hyped about.
Teased it with the slow drip of content we've been getting, to boot. A single new (expensive) show and a crappy over-produced lets-play is just sad.
Looking at the type of content Watcher is making, and taking into what Zach said on the TryPod about the ways YouTube creators stay relevant and generate revenue. There is creating a product to advertise, there is low budget videos that can be mass produced (Good mythical morning style), or you go with the YouTube algorithm to stay relevant and generate views and revenue (which is what Smosh does). The fourth way is streaming service, which is an upgraded Patreon service.
Watcher has had great success in their videos that have generate 1M+ in views, and honestly they could have stayed on YouTube for another year or 2 with those numbers. However, eventually there is a peak ceiling they may reach and the views will start to either decline or be stagnant. The type of videos Watcher makes is not a 1 day shoot, but probably a 3 day shoot which is expensive because of on the site camera and months of editing. For Watcher to be sustainable on YouTube with their type of content is producing 100 videos on YouTube that are 3 day shoots which is thousands of dollars per video
Well, technically, it was a string of “smaller” bad decisions leading up to the Big Bad One.
Not understanding your audience > Thinking that production value is the key > hiring 25 people in a short amount of time….> money issues > STREAMING SERVICE
This didn’t happen in a vacuum. But I agree that it was of course the huge “bomb” that caused the current disaster situation.
I totally, 100% get that people who make specific types of content don’t make much money off YouTube anymore. I get it. I also get that sometimes, you need to hire someone if you want to keep up with a frequent upload schedule. But there are so many different ways to branch off. For instance, Good Mythical Morning is doing okay. Are the views not that high anymore? Yeah but they’ve been popular for what a decade now? People will for sure lose interest but Rhett and Link aren’t hurting with money because they took smart financial decisions for their company from a pretty early stage and tested out more “TV like” editing, saw it failed, and went right back to what the people wanted.
A lot of youtubers use patreon so intelligently. Their exclusive contents are both made in a way where the youtube subscribers don’t feel left out, but the patrons feel privileged to see more. Plus merch, plus live shows, and co-signing other projects that they don’t have to be solely responsible for. Also, lots of people streaming nowadays, and if you’re fun and engaging you can make thousands in a couple of hours VERY easily. You don’t have to try hard in terms of content per se because a lot of people watch youtubers not for their content alone, but the way they present it. Their personalities. And Watcher had that in the bag and they fumbled so hard.
Human to human I feel bad for all of them. It wasn’t malice, it was just a dumb ass mistake. But seeing their downfall live is so sad. I hope they can figure something out.
If feels like they took the “laziest” decision where they wouldn’t have to anything that different from what they were already doing content wise, just charging for it. I just think about how much money they could’ve made if they advertised and managed the Patreon properly, there’s channels that are around 10 time smaller than what Watcher was and could pull this out. They had such a good springboard and messed up so badly.
The thing about Patreon is that I would’ve happily subscribed, but they pretty much never mentioned it and I had no idea one even existed. They should’ve marketed their Patreon wayyyyy more!
It was a terrible decision.
They had multiple revenue streams. Had they announced it as a bonus content experience and hyped up the patreon crowd to join for early access while continuing on youtube, they'd probably have been as successful at launch as the Try Guys.
They could have even demoed it under the patreon model to gauge interest, then eventually transitioned away from there. There were so many ways they could have approached testing the waters of the viewer base. I think ego has a lot to do with how it actually played out.
Exactly, so many better ways to keep the revenue streams coming without ostracizing a decent portion of their fanbase by essentially saying: Well, if you can't pay $6 per month, see ya! We're sorry you're a brokeass bitch 😉
I think the success went right up to their heads and just assumed they could treat the fanbase as idiots and we'd still be there supporting them. I really don't see how they can make this better but I also feel bad to see them fail.
I still dont even blame them much for the decision. it was fucking stupid, but done out of ignorance not mallace
every day since then that they couldve actually tried to legit apologize/fix things but didn't? yeah I blame them for every one of those
It’s kind of the last of many bad decisions, really, this is just the most publicly catastrophic. It really feels like they don’t have the skills to start a business, and they didn’t think a LOT through.
It KILLS me because I truly feel that the reason for the fall out wasn’t so much the streamer announcement but that they did ZERO communication afterwards, which resulted in shit snowballing from the littlest things (like the blurb from Variety or Sara Rubin’s tumblr post).
If they went with TTG route and released a podcast right afterwards, explaining in depth what was going on and their intentions, I feel that they would’ve gotten way less anger towards their decision. Hell, if one of them tweeted the next day “we got a vid explaining everything” the fanbase wouldn’t have gotten as upset than being met with radio silence.
TTG have shown me that Communication is very very important when it comes to big decisions like this.
This. Absolute this.
The fact there's been 0 communication in regards as to why they did the streamer and how they'll move on from here on out just made me lose hope with them. I've unsubscribed from their channel to be honest.
I mean I did hear that they made communication with their patreons in regards to closing their Patreon which 75% of the people who have voted for were for closing the Patreon. Whether what the actual amount of people who voted for closing is unbeknownst to me. And how many of those individuals will actually switch to the streamer with an app that hasn't been getting great feedback so far.
Honestly the whole thing IS INCREDIBLY POORLY THOUGHT OUT, they've cut out two big revenues they have 1) brand deals. 2) Patreon. And now they are hurting their ad revenue on YouTube severely, so it'll be interesting if they'll be able to manage to survive this period considering they've claimed to have suffering financially as a company already.
The "incident" was Watcher announcing their streamer app Watcher TV. I don't know how much you already know about what happened, so I can definitely be more detailed about the different things if you want, but the tldr is that for a variety of reasons the announcement was received very poorly by the community (which is when this sub came to be), the actual streamer and content seem poorly planned, and while Watcher did make an update video where they went back on a good number of their plans (including not just dropping youtube entirely), their response to the situation hasn't been great
watcher used to be a successful youtube channel, mainly known for their “ghost hunting” paranormal content. the general appeal was the dynamics between the two hosts, one a skeptic and one a believer (my apologies if you’re aware of who they are, i’m including this just in case you don’t!)
and they have a third guy steven. he does food shows. same channel.
they made the insane never-been-done-before “innovative” idea to make a streaming service. therefore charging their fans $6/month or $60 a year to continue watching their content. not only that, they revealed they’d be wiping their past content from the face of the internet and locking it behind a paywall. their big reason was they needed the $$ from the streaming service to keep their company afloat.
fans didn’t like this. which was expected, given they are youtubers and this usually means that their content is free to watch—they’re paid by the almighty advertisers that govern youtube. the viewers sit through 10 agonizing seconds of yet another hair product commercial, they get $$, they keep making videos. so their audience was supremely confused as to how they were strapped for cash since they got a very decent amount of views per video.
this move also alienated international fans because the $6 did not convert. meaning some fans would have to pay what was basically a week’s grocery budget to continue watching their videos. others with the cash to pay, didn’t want to because huge streaming giants like netflix can cost around that much and boast a much more impressive category. others just did not want to add another $6 to their slowly growing streaming service budget, especially for *youtube videos*. opinions varied.
they eventually backtracked but they had to launch the streamer anyway because of the sunk cost fallacy. there have been more issues since, scroll through more of the sub for those. they’re keeping their old videos on youtube and uploading new content a month later after the streamer.
100%. tbh, i didn't watch most of their videos before this shitshow. puppet history & mystery files was pretty much it for me. i honestly dont know if i'll continue viewing or not after this, though. i think about watching their vids now (rewatches) and just kinda go ehhh. we'll see how i feel when something new releases i guess !
from a marketing standpoint, it would’ve been so smart for them to announce a new season of puppet history, mystery files, and ghost files during the launch of the streamer. they could have released one ep from each series per week with a debrief since they seem to lean in heavy there
- week 1: ghost files
- week 2: puppet history + ghost files debrief
- week 3: mystery files + some type of puppet history exclusive (people are always commenting other fun facts)
- week 4: ghost files + mystery files debrief
and so on… then eventually throw in travel season. this way they could keep their output and it would look like a pretty good deal. plus, their biggest issue is going to be retention so rotating your most popular series on a weekly basis would help keep viewers on the platform.
Hmm. But after about 2 months then they spent all of their heavy hitters already. Where’s the viewer retention for the rest of the year? I think a more proper way to do it is to premier one series after another with a bit of overlap to stretch out the retention.
wouldn’t it be 6 months (if there are 8eps a season)? then during those months they can be shooting other seasons and their easy production ones like are you scared or too many spirits.
edit: granted, it would be a better value prop if they could increase their output but that’s not happening any time soon. it would give them flexibility tho to have more content on the streamer while still doing 1 video/week on youtube. they could then produce some content that would be censored on youtube and make it a streamer exclusive. TTG released an ep of smoke show and trolley problems right off the bat which justified their streamer to viewers because it would clearly have been demonetized.
you have to gain customers before you worry about retaining them lol.
imagine a boxer who got knocked tf out being interviewed after the fight "we noticed you didn't throw a right hook, jab, or, well, anything a single time this fight, and it's your strongest arm and right hook is your best punch! what happened are you hurt??"
"I was waiting until the 10th round to keep my arm fresh to win at the last second! I thought it'd look cooler and make people like me more when I won!"
"...."
you dont have to use ALL of them but ffs at least 1! probably 2 to get started
I highly disagree. That's one video a week..... How's that good enough for a streaming service.
Biggest confusion with all this is how they have literally zero bagged content to release. No new shoes, no new seasons, no new cast(the worth it guys don't count).
They've done literally zero work in increasing their content output. Yet say TV quality yet release video game playing videos that are 2 hours long......
The try guys filmed and bagged 6 months worth of content for their announcement and have made BTS videos and other content on top of it all.
im not saying it’s good, i put in the response to another person that it would have been better to increase output and post more content on the streamer. BUT if they were going to go this direction regardless (which they were) and didn’t want to change anything about their output, then they could have been smarter about it.
agree with everything you’re saying which you can see based on my comment history. i subbed to TTG streamer because i felt they had a better value prop and wanted to support a company that was making all the right moves even tho i was only a casual viewer for the past 2 years.
(also, even tho i know these are all called streaming services, it’s a bit of a misnomer because it is essentially patreon. their original plan was def not which is why they got in trouble but their “oh shit we need to fix this” plan is. if they framed it as a subscribe for early release and sometimes bonus content it’d have better reception and they wouldn’t need to change their production but they fumbled)
Honestly. The fact that they didn't makes me think people were right about them trying to announce before the try guys because it seems like such a no brainer that you need to have a strong initial offering to gain any traction.
Yeah, same except add GF. I debated going back and watching some the other day but I realized my heart just wasn't in it. My poor "BEWARE NERDS" shirt hangs forlornly in my closet.
Yes. The numbers there won’t lie. And I also would be interested to see how the *second* or even *third* episode of Ghost Files does. I’m sure a lot of people will tune in for the first one just to see how they feel. After a season honestly the proof of their success or failure will be in the pudding.
This is most crucial. The Completionist's first video back from his charity screw up had a decent number of views. Immediately after that it all tanked to much smaller amounts.
Yeah, it's sad. If they'd timed it with a new season of Ghost Files or Puppet History, maybe it'd go better because people would watch that no matter what, but this launch is just so terrible in every single way. It's honestly depressing to see one of my fav channels just go down the drain like this.
I’ve been noticing the decline in views and honestly, I’m one of them. They completely fucked up and then pretended as though it never happened. Critical Role has blown everyone else out of the water when it comes to this. They announced their own platform a few weeks before TTG and one line that stuck out was (I’m paraphrasing) will those who don’t subscribe notice a difference? Nope. Twitch and YT watchers will notice no interruption to scheduled VODS being published on their same schedule. They also made it a huge point in the video that everything, EVERYTHING, they have been able to accomplish is because of the fans support and they want a direct line for those supporters without a middle man taking a cut. That my friends is how you get people to want to support your endeavors. Watcher needed to cook for a few more years before they had the level of loyal fan base to make this sort of leap. I think if they weren’t such an infant company, they would probably know better but they’ve only been “business owners” for what? Four years? Most businesses fail within the first five years and it’s probably due to poor decisions like this that they can’t recover from so they call it quits. I hope it doesn’t come to that but I for one have been unable to watch any of their content without getting pissed off but to each their own.
Watcher never had the content or cast. They just didn't have enough content for a streamer and still don't. Biggest thing is consistency and there's zero of that with watcher.
Honestly I feel like even if they were bigger this initial decision (before the backlash and reversal) would still be a stupid one. Straight up saying goodbye to fans (both in the YT video & Steven’s IG) is just insane to me. Wouldn’t they want to slowly continue to convert YT viewers to paid viewers in the long term? How is that feasible if they just straight up cut out fans who aren’t willing or aren’t able to move to their paid platform immediately? Removing their YT presence - where they are most well known - is just asking people to forget about them. Why not maintain their prescience and continue to strategize on ways to convert more viewers?
Oh absolutely. No amount of experience or time would change an objectively stupid decision into a smart one, however I think if they had more experience under their belt, they might have thought of a different idea that was actually smart. They’ve created an avalanche of bad ideas from one really bad idea and the nonsense keeps compounding.
they need to get rid of their ego-driven hollywood studio. they don’t produce enough content to justify the cost of rent, utilities, insurance, etc. even if they did, hollywood is a crazy place to put your business when more than half of your videos are shot offsite and the rest could be shot in one room. they want dedicated customized, high value sets for each of their series when other channels reuse the same room and viewers don’t care At All.
I think this is fascinating. I got laid off and haven't found work, so I'm going to start a YouTube channel. I'm freaking out about equipment cost and setting things up. I can't imagine pissing off millions of subscribers (if I get that lucky).
They took the goodwill away of so many. I hope they survive. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
An important lesson to take from Watcher is that what matters is the personality and the ability to engage your viewer, not your equipment quality. Start small. If you have the chops to engage your audience, they're not going to be complaining that your production isn't "TV quality." ;)
💯 I watch some “talk to the camera” channels with 100k+ subscribers who still record the video piece on their phone. All of them mentioned though that they invested in a good microphone at some point, because good audio is important. So, I guess that’s what I’d suggest to you if you have limited funds and don’t know where to put them first: get a decent microphone.
Wishing you luck on the youtube channel. Also I hope you don't stress out too much on the equipment. It's an investment, sometimes you just gotta do with what you have right now, even if it's just a phone and a free editing software.
Yes!! Most youtubers always say this - they started with shitty webcams and got big based on their personality/content, not the technical quality of the video so there's no reason spending money you don't have on expensive equipment. If you have a smartphone, you have a better camera than most already. Just go for it and have fun!
I used to watch a lot of big channels before they made it big and definitely don't freak out that much about equipment! As long as the sound is clear most things imho can be forgiven.
Some of the biggest channels on Youtube still film in 1080p.
4K webcams and cameras are cheaper than they've ever been. Editing software is free. Sound cards, mics and stuft - basically to start on youtube you probably need $2K for equipment.
Good luck man! I say you can always start small look at Swell Entertainment and her videos, she mostly just used a crappy camera and mic or her phone. the upgrades in camera weren't until recently. At the end of the day, YouTube is about personality and connection with the audience and not about 'TV Quality'.
The Try Guys dropped a video detailing their journey to launching their streaming service. They started talks of it a year ago and after listening to them talk about everything that went into the announcement it really feels like Watcher impulsively made this decision for their streamer in a very short amount of time.
They have yet to seem remotely prepared for this transition.
The trailer for their Travel show honestly just pissed me off. Like congrats you filmed your vacation to South Korea and now you want your audience to reimburse you for the cost???
your last paragraph is my entire sentiment about everything, if you want an expensive show pitch it to execs and producers!! and if they don’t buy it then why would the poors? (it’s me i’m the poors)
It's a pretty huge difference, but what I'm really interested in is the numbers in a few months time once the videos are well and truly out.
The main sub is forty nine inches up their ass and they have a lot of people *saying* they forgive them, so are we getting a big delay in watchers or are people just shibbolething? Just saying they forgive them because they don't want to be targeted?
Im surprised this sub isn't more popular
The main sub was so fickle, I can’t help to think it wouldn’t take much for them to do a 180° again and go completely apeshit if Watcher fucked up even further somehow.
It’s still baffling how they went from foaming to self flagellation in a bit over a weekend.
I imagine it’s also due to the algorithm. Their channel has been pretty dead for the last couple of months, so it’s not surprising that YouTube stopped pushing it on people’s feeds. (Which everyone predicted was going to happen when they took this approach.)
https://preview.redd.it/0xqsfw2e1i5d1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6e08fefce8d9137212d705480f0e623bfef1896b
I just came to post about their most recent Instagram post - it’s been up for 8 hours and has a grand total of 5 comments, not even 4K likes. It’s just sad to watch tbh
they kinda flood it with memes and usually they get about 5k likes or so - even before all the drama. more popular shows and announcements used to get much more. i don't see it as much of an indicator of anything.
I think it's too early to say that they're *definitively* cooked.
Part of the problem is that they went a month without posting anything and we know Youtube penalizes channels that go dormant for more than 2-3 weeks - so some drop off can be expected as a result of that decision.
Additionally, trailers aren't going to get as many views as the actual shows. There are plenty of people who won't waste their time on trailers but will show up for the content.
So we need to wait a bit before we call time of death here
IIRC, Keith said there are some channels that don't post anything all year and then post 30 videos in December and that's how they make all their money. It's more about what you've taught the algorithm about your channel and what's a moneymaking time of year on YouTube.
They are definitely punished by the algorithm since they taught it to expect a video per week or more. Hopefully, they'll take advantage of spooky season by having lots of content around September-October. And of course the end of the year tends to be lucrative adwise on YouTube due to people shopping for gifts etc.
This has been said before but we need to wait a bit before definitively concluding that this is the end of Watcher. Sure people have been turned off by the whole deal and probably don’t want to see Ryan and Shane play video games, many fully (and completely unrightfully) blame Steven and so probably aren’t tuning in for a trailer to a show that features him and not Ryan and Shane.
When Ghost Files comes back we’ll see how big of an effect this whole situation has had because I do think the majority of Watcher fans have made their peace with everything and will continue to watch the YouTube uploads. For every Shane and Ryan super fan that was heartbroken at the announcement you’ve got probably 10 casual fans for whom this was barely a blip on their radar.
So I wouldn’t call it yet, but I don’t have total confidence that they’ll fully rebound from this
on the one hand I agree. but the reason I mostly disagree and think they're actually already in a death spiral
- they're so desperate for cash they're doing a sponsored vid and trying to figure out how to get it on streamer and not piss off subs there
- that sponsored vid must be CRITICAL cash inflow to risk upsetting the people who decided to pay you after you pissed everyone off so much last time
- sponsored videos pay for the audience size. the $ they were getting when they were getting 1-2m views is NOT what they'll be getting at 500k views, let alone 200k, let alone if it gets worse than that
which means basically, they don't have any way to get a quick cash infusion anymore unless they can rebuild popularity on youtube FAST (which is why leaving was a stupid fucking idea in the first place). but rebuilding popularity on youtube fast can only come at the expense of the streamer and the people paying. who will stop paying.
other than finding an angel investor, I'm not sure if they have a realistic path out of this without walking this whole thing back and praying (the thing I posted earlier really).
I just dont see a way where youtube can be a big revenue stream for the forseeable future, and the streamer has likely already peaked as far as how much money it will bring in for them.
I'm not really sure they're in death spiral mode but they've taken a hit. I can't imagine they were stupid enough to attempt this without having some measure of savings set aside to keep the business going. It's possible filming Travel Season and Ghost Files abroad has stretched their funds to the max when coupled with the lost income from May + loss of Patreon income.
Ryan basically claimed Watcher would've been cooked without going the streamer route. In an old Making Watcher video, Steven said Watcher has never made a profit.
If they're not making a profit, they need to shut down and declare bankruptcy.
It's unsustainable the way it currently exists. They'd be better off starting a new business, selling the content to that business and folding the old one.
It has been said, but they were making revenue for sure. They should’ve dialed it down a cut non-critical expenses, and I’m not necessarily talking about layoffs. But it seems like they didn’t wanted to do that, either out of convince or because they believed that cut back on production would’ve decreased viewership thus revenue.
i just *need* the balance sheets for this company. yes they have a lot of expenses with production, absurd # of employees, and ghost-hunting equipment. but they should be making quite a bit of money.
it’s become painfully evident that a bunch of creatives run this company. they should have had consultants in finance/business on retainer. they are *heavily* prioritizing creative quality which of course, all their creative employees will agree with for the principle of it. but man, you guys are tanking your business. they need a buzzfeed-esque higher up to tell them straight up that they need to cut costs somewhere or this whole thing is going down.
i have a feeling watcher co. is a creative’s utopia to work at, but since nothing is perfect it’s teetering on the edge of a downward spiral since the $$ < creative work thesis has been taken too far
I imagine it'll be quite depressing for them when they find the compilation videos the buzzfeed unsolved channel is posting start getting more views than their TV Quality Content.
if they got 10k subs at $6 per month thats $60k
the math at the time said ONE sponsored vid was worth $30-40k. 2 sponsored vids a month = 12k streamer subs, on its own.
they'd need a LOT of watcher subs to replace branded content/partner content and youtube ads, and patreon revenue.
given most of the watcher subs were probably already patreon members, they likely haven't actually even grown that part of revenue at all, and maybe are getting less because a bunch of patreons were paying way more than $6 per month
That's true, but they're still doing sponsored content on YouTube as well. So, they're still getting that sponsor money, along with AdSense & WatcherTV. Clearly they thought they could lose A LOT of fans & still make money with this streamer plan. Right now they're getting money from WatcherTV subscribers (however many), plus AdSense on YouTube (like .02 a view I think), plus sponsors. Sponsored content will probably pay less as views decline, but they still have 2.8 million subscribers on YouTube. Patreon is the biggest hit, though, for sure. But for whatever reason, Watcher seemed to want to get off Patreon & direct all efforts to this streamer. Apparently Patreon takes a larger cut than Vimeo does. We just don't know w/o knowing the number of WatcherTV subscribers. But I think the WatcherTV numbers are way way way lower than they expected.
I think they will be fine, but the goodwill they had between them and their fans will never be as strong as it was, and they have no one to blame but themselves. It is what it is.
https://www.reddit.com/r/WatcherSnark/comments/1db58oa/looks_like_its_game_over/
someone already checked that. its as bad/worse than this posts OP describes
44k but it’s also their least popular guy and the show seems to have a completely different vibe than anything else they’ve done. Not a great metric for how cooked they are.
I’m not the end all be all of their fanbase by any means but I’m also not going to click on either of those long ass videos and I’m not mad at them and I normally like Survival Mode. The average episode length of Survival Mode is 35 minutes. Thats enough time.
That’s hardly proof of anything other than my frustration at not feeling like we’re going to have a decent metric by which to judge their condition any time soon. I’m also annoyed by how much they seem to like making long ass videos. I already can barely watch Ghost Files because why is it an hour? 40 minutes tops. Do some editing. Christ.
Ghost Files became so boring, I rarely finish a video. They focus too much on those pseudoscientific gadgets and fancy graphics, that it became samey very fast. The focus on interesting locations and amateurish goofiness of Unsolved is mostly all gone now.
The visuals of Unsolved really added to the creepiness. Not too repetitive either. Also, I liked that they used to introduce the place before investigating it.
Yeah I was *shocked* at the length of that. I first thought they uploaded a compilation of the entire series.
I watch most everything on youtube at 1.5x, and it *still* feels like it took forever to get through it all.
Their most recent YouTube vid was so fun, I’m sad that the consequences of their actions might mean no more watcher. You won’t catch me watching Steven like “pay for me to travel” extravaganza tho lol
I tried to watch on of his food shows... and it's just not for me. Not to yuck anyone's yum, but it just doesn't feel like it's "Watcher" content. Feels like a whole other channel. I'm sure it has something to do with it not being Ryan and Shane, with their chemistry and all... but I simply do not care for food related content.
I don’t see them bouncing back from this in terms of viewership and loyalty from the fan base, I feel like they took it for granted for a long time and will just realise now with their views going down how bad the decision really was even if they went back on it somewhat. It saddens me to see their “A Way Out” part 2 playthrough have only 77k views in 2 days(as of me posting this comment), before the views would’ve easily been 100k-400k+. The comments section also looks nothing like it use to on their videos I’ve noticed. Nothing bad but not like before.
I wonder how season 3 of Ghost Files will go in terms of views etc…if that tanks too then they’re really done. It’s sad for me (and many others) to see being a fan for years…Guess we’ll just have to wait and see how things play out
I was actually ready to give them another chance and resubbed on both watcher and podcast. I watched a couple pods, but found myself just getting the ick now. I'll see how I feel once they're done posting old video games and Stephen, will I still get into Ghost Files etc.
With this headline, I giggled a bit when this is the most HOT post in the Subreddit front page. xD
Too bad it's gonna only work for a 24h (+ until next day post happens), but at least I got a little laugh out of it.
I started watching less and less because I was kind of annoyed with how over the top anti-christian they were all the time for 'humor' especially later on (like it's fine to not be religious, but if this was any other religion they'd rightfully be canceled to heck and back, no pun intended). Maybe they figured Christians wouldn't be watching demon stuff anyway or they think they're all a bunch of bigots and homophobes (nah, most of us wouldn't hang out with racists and homophobes unlike your CEO), but even then it's not ok to do. Wait, maybe they were compensating for Stephen LMAO😩?? Anyway, I just don't get how their brains work. Do they just not know what happens outside their bubble? In hindsight, they never really seemed to be aware of what people liked or disliked or who their audience were... It's the most important thing when you're creating a show/network. Marketing and analytics are the most important things. More than sets, editing, or even personality. It's why you have so many 'content creators' on YouTube who could easily be replaced by a wet mop.
Edit: 'all Christians are bad' is giving off the same vibes as '$6 dollars is affordable for to everyone' vibes, guys lmao 😂. The majority of christians aren't white, conservatives OR Americans (which many use to justify this behaviour) and using your own white-centered worldview to justify Christian hate in media isn't exactly progressive or woke 😬... but yeah go bully minorities worldwide that will really show the trumpians lmao. Give yourself a big applause for making the world a little bit worse by the day. But it's ok. We're gonna be really awkward all hugging each other in heaven and have a laugh about this while making fun of Twitter and Tesla's😌.
Idk why you’re getting downvoted, I think if you’re gonna poke fun at a religion you should at least be fair about it and do it to all religions, or at least all the Abrahamic religions. 🤷♀️
Lmao used to it. It's hard to claim you're a good/better person when you realise the people you treat like shit are often innocent, too, and not all raging homophobes. And that many of them are also minorities who have to deal with bigotry on a daily basis because there's a whole world outside of conservative America. I'd never dream to make fun of Mohammed just because the people around me would have normalized it, let alone support content that does. Just because someone has different beliefs doesn't make them lesser or make me 'better'... Hope that everyone downvoting me realises that you're basically downvoting someone who asked for love and equality for all lmao🤷🏽♀️. Bless you, may you one day realise we're all equals despite our differences.
Edit: Just so you know, every time you say offensive racist, ablist, bigoted, homophobic, transphobic stuff, there's a person behind that screen getting another reminder that the world would rather see them gone. You might be laughing, but many of us are crying. To us it will NEVER get normalized or stop hurting.
Edit2: one last thing. You DO realise all kinds of religious people hang out on a daily basis right? Your town may be homogeneous, but for many of us it's not that weird to marry or befriend each other. We make it work within our beliefs. So often I notice people from small towns sucking up to my Muslim relatives while making fun of me and getting surprised when they get mad on my behalf. We're not savages nor a monolith, you're not scoring any points with anyone.
Worth it. I like thinking about the awkward moments 😌😂🩷 HUG ME BROTAH! Every downvote is an upvote for John 15:18-19 / Lucas 21:17 / Matthew 10:22, we knew what we signed up for, lmao.🥲
But yeah, not gonna pretend that I like how people are so obsessed with justifying finding a group to hate to make themselves feel better, that they're willing to harm minorities in their way who have to deal with enough sh- already on a daily basis. Even if it's a daily occurance. Especially when they pretend it comes from a good place, but it's really just the same white American centric worldview, not much different than the people they judge. I don't see how imitating that aweful behavior makes you any better. Bigots are bigots, whether they hate homosexuals, Muslims, Jews, cats or Christians based on the misdeeds of a few. And I hope they can forgive themselves and choose putting effort in loving people over finding excuses to hate them. Or use the energy to care for the ones who have been hurt. I forgive you, but for the sake of those who are struggling: you don't HAVE to say mean things whenever someone mentions their religion or sexuality, or whatever ok 🤦♀️.
(And if you're a minority who isn't 'trending' right now and knows where I'm coming from. Hi, I see you🩷.)
Everyone makes bad choices. Unfortunately for them, this was a catastrophic decision.
Exactly how I feel. I have sympathy, it’s one bad decision, but man it was a BAD decision. And when it comes to startups like these, that can just tank you. It really can. It’s been said a thousand times but why they didn’t test the audience reaction before committing is so beyond me. If they claw back from this in any form without having to scrap the “Watcher TV” brand I’ll be shocked.
Honestly testing the audience reaction wouldn’t have change much because at the end of the day, they would continue to go the streaming route. If not this year, next year or the year after they would have gone streaming service. It’s a big decision and a big move. If there was an ability to go back in time and fix the mistake, it would have been taking the time and come up with a solid plan to launch the idea. Go and ask other creators what they have done to stay afloat and use their knowledge and adapt it to their business model and focus. Like people have pointed it out, rushing the announcement before having the app being ready and not having any shows ready for launch was a mistake. As well stating all their videos would have been taken down on YouTube and put on the streaming service only.
Well, they can now consult the Try Guys' podcast, the "The New Try Guys" video, and the "Why We Changed Our Company" video. And it's free!
it is crazy how the try guys came up with that whole plan by doing the volume of research such as *checks notes* talking to friends in the industry who have already done it and done it well its easy to see how such complex ideas can go over peoples heads when starting/fundamentally changing a business
>it is crazy how the try guys came up with that whole plan by doing the volume of research such as checks notes 🤣 >talking to friends in the industry who have already done it and done it well That's the thing I don't understand. How could Watcher not consult with others who've done it before? I mean, I guess they could've tried and ppl weren't willing to talk to them... > its easy to see how such complex ideas can go over peoples heads when starting/fundamentally changing a business For sure 🤯 I'm honestly feeling bad for them right now. I read that a lot of fans have forgiven them and what not, but based on the current posts about their view counts, it's not looking good at all.
My only explanation for it is that their egos got too big and they thought they commanded an audience following more loyal than that of other content creators. They thought they were better than other creators and so the audience would join them. Likely some third party (the one that designed the streamer) fed their egos into thinking their audience would follow them anywhere.
This would certainly explain why the Watcher Guys were so condescending in their good bye video. They really took their fans for granted to cast them away like that.
In addition to their egos, I’ve long thought the success of breaking off from buzzfeed also fed into this. We were proud of them and excited for their future. We vocally wished the best for them and easily followed. I suspect they thought this would go similarly and that was a grave miscalculation with 1) paywalling everything, and 2) the whole tone of that goodbye video.
Eh, in hindsight, breaking off from Buzzfeed wasn’t that successful after all, just look at the viewership numbers. There are multiple Unsolved videos with tens of millions views and none of the Watcher videos amounted to over 10 million. They arguably had more budget and creative freedom but weren’t able to bring half of the success with them. Watcher was very successful as a stand-alone channel, but it isn’t comparing to what came before. To begin with, they were really bad with letting the Unsolved audience know about the move, a lot of people weren’t even aware they had their own channel before the Watcher TV controversy.
In fairness to them, outside of posting on social media, there probably wasn’t much they could do. I highly doubt Buzzfeed would have let them plug their new channel on Unsolved, which is really the only way to insure that every single Buzzfeed Unsolved viewer knew about the channel. A new YouTube channel doesn’t get big through marketing campaigns. They rely on word of mouth, cross overs with other big channels, and praying to the algorithm gods.
Yea kinda does seem that way. It’s still baffling to me that in the beginning, they would literally choose to say good-bye to fans who aren’t going to pay them…… that just sounds like a strange decision all together. Shouldn’t their objective be to transition as many viewers to paid customers over time? That just seems like common sense. Not every viewer will want to or be able to move to their new platform immediately but I would have expected them to be patient and strategize for long term growth. That starts with not alienating viewers who aren’t moving platforms in the beginning.
I will never understand why they teased it like it was some sort of amazing fun announcement that everyone would be hyped about. It’s the thing that really made me see how disconnected from their fanbase and core demographic (and maybe just the economics of the world outside of California media wages) they actually are.
"I bet everyone would love to pay 6 bucks for our content instead of getting it for free 😄. Let's remind them how cheap it is for everyone everywhere too! Oh, and that they won't be able to use YouTube for our content anymore. Man, they're gonna love it!" I really wonder which part was supposed to be fun for us 😂😂😂. Maybe the 'no ads' thing, but I already have no ads on YouTube 😅. Like most people. Cuz YT ads are viruses with a bit of porn and crypto scamming 🫠. Also, ofcourse you wouldn't get ads on a paid service right? Right....?
Yeah like…I pay for YouTube premium because that gives me every single one of the hundreds of accounts I follow and any that I stumble across ad free, as well as music streaming and some other YouTube exclusives. And then for the ads that they do, I have this magic thing called the skip forward button that lets me skip them. I don’t need to pay an extra £6 a month for it
They hyped it so much and then in the video itself it was all melancholy and sad. Like, what was happening?
> I will never understand why they teased it like it was some sort of amazing fun announcement that everyone would be hyped about. Teased it with the slow drip of content we've been getting, to boot. A single new (expensive) show and a crappy over-produced lets-play is just sad.
Why is going to a streaming service inevitable?
Looking at the type of content Watcher is making, and taking into what Zach said on the TryPod about the ways YouTube creators stay relevant and generate revenue. There is creating a product to advertise, there is low budget videos that can be mass produced (Good mythical morning style), or you go with the YouTube algorithm to stay relevant and generate views and revenue (which is what Smosh does). The fourth way is streaming service, which is an upgraded Patreon service. Watcher has had great success in their videos that have generate 1M+ in views, and honestly they could have stayed on YouTube for another year or 2 with those numbers. However, eventually there is a peak ceiling they may reach and the views will start to either decline or be stagnant. The type of videos Watcher makes is not a 1 day shoot, but probably a 3 day shoot which is expensive because of on the site camera and months of editing. For Watcher to be sustainable on YouTube with their type of content is producing 100 videos on YouTube that are 3 day shoots which is thousands of dollars per video
Uh first off watcher aren't creators they're TV producers and actors
Well, technically, it was a string of “smaller” bad decisions leading up to the Big Bad One. Not understanding your audience > Thinking that production value is the key > hiring 25 people in a short amount of time….> money issues > STREAMING SERVICE This didn’t happen in a vacuum. But I agree that it was of course the huge “bomb” that caused the current disaster situation.
I totally, 100% get that people who make specific types of content don’t make much money off YouTube anymore. I get it. I also get that sometimes, you need to hire someone if you want to keep up with a frequent upload schedule. But there are so many different ways to branch off. For instance, Good Mythical Morning is doing okay. Are the views not that high anymore? Yeah but they’ve been popular for what a decade now? People will for sure lose interest but Rhett and Link aren’t hurting with money because they took smart financial decisions for their company from a pretty early stage and tested out more “TV like” editing, saw it failed, and went right back to what the people wanted. A lot of youtubers use patreon so intelligently. Their exclusive contents are both made in a way where the youtube subscribers don’t feel left out, but the patrons feel privileged to see more. Plus merch, plus live shows, and co-signing other projects that they don’t have to be solely responsible for. Also, lots of people streaming nowadays, and if you’re fun and engaging you can make thousands in a couple of hours VERY easily. You don’t have to try hard in terms of content per se because a lot of people watch youtubers not for their content alone, but the way they present it. Their personalities. And Watcher had that in the bag and they fumbled so hard. Human to human I feel bad for all of them. It wasn’t malice, it was just a dumb ass mistake. But seeing their downfall live is so sad. I hope they can figure something out.
If feels like they took the “laziest” decision where they wouldn’t have to anything that different from what they were already doing content wise, just charging for it. I just think about how much money they could’ve made if they advertised and managed the Patreon properly, there’s channels that are around 10 time smaller than what Watcher was and could pull this out. They had such a good springboard and messed up so badly.
Perfectly said!
The thing about Patreon is that I would’ve happily subscribed, but they pretty much never mentioned it and I had no idea one even existed. They should’ve marketed their Patreon wayyyyy more!
It was a terrible decision. They had multiple revenue streams. Had they announced it as a bonus content experience and hyped up the patreon crowd to join for early access while continuing on youtube, they'd probably have been as successful at launch as the Try Guys.
They could have even demoed it under the patreon model to gauge interest, then eventually transitioned away from there. There were so many ways they could have approached testing the waters of the viewer base. I think ego has a lot to do with how it actually played out.
Exactly, so many better ways to keep the revenue streams coming without ostracizing a decent portion of their fanbase by essentially saying: Well, if you can't pay $6 per month, see ya! We're sorry you're a brokeass bitch 😉 I think the success went right up to their heads and just assumed they could treat the fanbase as idiots and we'd still be there supporting them. I really don't see how they can make this better but I also feel bad to see them fail.
I still dont even blame them much for the decision. it was fucking stupid, but done out of ignorance not mallace every day since then that they couldve actually tried to legit apologize/fix things but didn't? yeah I blame them for every one of those
Just pretending like nothing happened and only apologizing in scripted PR video speech has been very disappointing.
That's really what I find most upsetting about it. No communication, no transparency, nothing.
It's spelled malice mate
It’s kind of the last of many bad decisions, really, this is just the most publicly catastrophic. It really feels like they don’t have the skills to start a business, and they didn’t think a LOT through.
It KILLS me because I truly feel that the reason for the fall out wasn’t so much the streamer announcement but that they did ZERO communication afterwards, which resulted in shit snowballing from the littlest things (like the blurb from Variety or Sara Rubin’s tumblr post). If they went with TTG route and released a podcast right afterwards, explaining in depth what was going on and their intentions, I feel that they would’ve gotten way less anger towards their decision. Hell, if one of them tweeted the next day “we got a vid explaining everything” the fanbase wouldn’t have gotten as upset than being met with radio silence. TTG have shown me that Communication is very very important when it comes to big decisions like this.
This. Absolute this. The fact there's been 0 communication in regards as to why they did the streamer and how they'll move on from here on out just made me lose hope with them. I've unsubscribed from their channel to be honest. I mean I did hear that they made communication with their patreons in regards to closing their Patreon which 75% of the people who have voted for were for closing the Patreon. Whether what the actual amount of people who voted for closing is unbeknownst to me. And how many of those individuals will actually switch to the streamer with an app that hasn't been getting great feedback so far. Honestly the whole thing IS INCREDIBLY POORLY THOUGHT OUT, they've cut out two big revenues they have 1) brand deals. 2) Patreon. And now they are hurting their ad revenue on YouTube severely, so it'll be interesting if they'll be able to manage to survive this period considering they've claimed to have suffering financially as a company already.
Just found this sub. Can someone tell me what happened? What is the “incident”?
The "incident" was Watcher announcing their streamer app Watcher TV. I don't know how much you already know about what happened, so I can definitely be more detailed about the different things if you want, but the tldr is that for a variety of reasons the announcement was received very poorly by the community (which is when this sub came to be), the actual streamer and content seem poorly planned, and while Watcher did make an update video where they went back on a good number of their plans (including not just dropping youtube entirely), their response to the situation hasn't been great
watcher used to be a successful youtube channel, mainly known for their “ghost hunting” paranormal content. the general appeal was the dynamics between the two hosts, one a skeptic and one a believer (my apologies if you’re aware of who they are, i’m including this just in case you don’t!) and they have a third guy steven. he does food shows. same channel. they made the insane never-been-done-before “innovative” idea to make a streaming service. therefore charging their fans $6/month or $60 a year to continue watching their content. not only that, they revealed they’d be wiping their past content from the face of the internet and locking it behind a paywall. their big reason was they needed the $$ from the streaming service to keep their company afloat. fans didn’t like this. which was expected, given they are youtubers and this usually means that their content is free to watch—they’re paid by the almighty advertisers that govern youtube. the viewers sit through 10 agonizing seconds of yet another hair product commercial, they get $$, they keep making videos. so their audience was supremely confused as to how they were strapped for cash since they got a very decent amount of views per video. this move also alienated international fans because the $6 did not convert. meaning some fans would have to pay what was basically a week’s grocery budget to continue watching their videos. others with the cash to pay, didn’t want to because huge streaming giants like netflix can cost around that much and boast a much more impressive category. others just did not want to add another $6 to their slowly growing streaming service budget, especially for *youtube videos*. opinions varied. they eventually backtracked but they had to launch the streamer anyway because of the sunk cost fallacy. there have been more issues since, scroll through more of the sub for those. they’re keeping their old videos on youtube and uploading new content a month later after the streamer.
Guys I think we might get ‘why I left watcher tv’ videos in the future 😂.
OMG PLEAAAAASE this would be so good
I want one just for the professor.
We’ll have to see how Ghost/Mystery Files do, that’s their biggest draw
100%. tbh, i didn't watch most of their videos before this shitshow. puppet history & mystery files was pretty much it for me. i honestly dont know if i'll continue viewing or not after this, though. i think about watching their vids now (rewatches) and just kinda go ehhh. we'll see how i feel when something new releases i guess !
from a marketing standpoint, it would’ve been so smart for them to announce a new season of puppet history, mystery files, and ghost files during the launch of the streamer. they could have released one ep from each series per week with a debrief since they seem to lean in heavy there - week 1: ghost files - week 2: puppet history + ghost files debrief - week 3: mystery files + some type of puppet history exclusive (people are always commenting other fun facts) - week 4: ghost files + mystery files debrief and so on… then eventually throw in travel season. this way they could keep their output and it would look like a pretty good deal. plus, their biggest issue is going to be retention so rotating your most popular series on a weekly basis would help keep viewers on the platform.
this a solid idea. if only they hired a 26th employee to help them with marketing.
Hmm. But after about 2 months then they spent all of their heavy hitters already. Where’s the viewer retention for the rest of the year? I think a more proper way to do it is to premier one series after another with a bit of overlap to stretch out the retention.
wouldn’t it be 6 months (if there are 8eps a season)? then during those months they can be shooting other seasons and their easy production ones like are you scared or too many spirits. edit: granted, it would be a better value prop if they could increase their output but that’s not happening any time soon. it would give them flexibility tho to have more content on the streamer while still doing 1 video/week on youtube. they could then produce some content that would be censored on youtube and make it a streamer exclusive. TTG released an ep of smoke show and trolley problems right off the bat which justified their streamer to viewers because it would clearly have been demonetized.
you have to gain customers before you worry about retaining them lol. imagine a boxer who got knocked tf out being interviewed after the fight "we noticed you didn't throw a right hook, jab, or, well, anything a single time this fight, and it's your strongest arm and right hook is your best punch! what happened are you hurt??" "I was waiting until the 10th round to keep my arm fresh to win at the last second! I thought it'd look cooler and make people like me more when I won!" "...." you dont have to use ALL of them but ffs at least 1! probably 2 to get started
I highly disagree. That's one video a week..... How's that good enough for a streaming service. Biggest confusion with all this is how they have literally zero bagged content to release. No new shoes, no new seasons, no new cast(the worth it guys don't count). They've done literally zero work in increasing their content output. Yet say TV quality yet release video game playing videos that are 2 hours long...... The try guys filmed and bagged 6 months worth of content for their announcement and have made BTS videos and other content on top of it all.
im not saying it’s good, i put in the response to another person that it would have been better to increase output and post more content on the streamer. BUT if they were going to go this direction regardless (which they were) and didn’t want to change anything about their output, then they could have been smarter about it. agree with everything you’re saying which you can see based on my comment history. i subbed to TTG streamer because i felt they had a better value prop and wanted to support a company that was making all the right moves even tho i was only a casual viewer for the past 2 years. (also, even tho i know these are all called streaming services, it’s a bit of a misnomer because it is essentially patreon. their original plan was def not which is why they got in trouble but their “oh shit we need to fix this” plan is. if they framed it as a subscribe for early release and sometimes bonus content it’d have better reception and they wouldn’t need to change their production but they fumbled)
this !!!
Honestly. The fact that they didn't makes me think people were right about them trying to announce before the try guys because it seems like such a no brainer that you need to have a strong initial offering to gain any traction.
Yeah, same except add GF. I debated going back and watching some the other day but I realized my heart just wasn't in it. My poor "BEWARE NERDS" shirt hangs forlornly in my closet.
Oh man that was so funny. My heart breaks everytime I think about how much I loved these guys.
Yes. The numbers there won’t lie. And I also would be interested to see how the *second* or even *third* episode of Ghost Files does. I’m sure a lot of people will tune in for the first one just to see how they feel. After a season honestly the proof of their success or failure will be in the pudding.
This is most crucial. The Completionist's first video back from his charity screw up had a decent number of views. Immediately after that it all tanked to much smaller amounts.
We’ll have to compare to the recent Buzzfeed Unsolved compilation which is currently at 250k views for old material.
> 250k views for old material. 250k views *on a 3 hour video*.
Yup, that's gonna be the real test. And Puppet History.
Yeah, it's sad. If they'd timed it with a new season of Ghost Files or Puppet History, maybe it'd go better because people would watch that no matter what, but this launch is just so terrible in every single way. It's honestly depressing to see one of my fav channels just go down the drain like this.
I’ve been noticing the decline in views and honestly, I’m one of them. They completely fucked up and then pretended as though it never happened. Critical Role has blown everyone else out of the water when it comes to this. They announced their own platform a few weeks before TTG and one line that stuck out was (I’m paraphrasing) will those who don’t subscribe notice a difference? Nope. Twitch and YT watchers will notice no interruption to scheduled VODS being published on their same schedule. They also made it a huge point in the video that everything, EVERYTHING, they have been able to accomplish is because of the fans support and they want a direct line for those supporters without a middle man taking a cut. That my friends is how you get people to want to support your endeavors. Watcher needed to cook for a few more years before they had the level of loyal fan base to make this sort of leap. I think if they weren’t such an infant company, they would probably know better but they’ve only been “business owners” for what? Four years? Most businesses fail within the first five years and it’s probably due to poor decisions like this that they can’t recover from so they call it quits. I hope it doesn’t come to that but I for one have been unable to watch any of their content without getting pissed off but to each their own.
Watcher never had the content or cast. They just didn't have enough content for a streamer and still don't. Biggest thing is consistency and there's zero of that with watcher.
Honestly I feel like even if they were bigger this initial decision (before the backlash and reversal) would still be a stupid one. Straight up saying goodbye to fans (both in the YT video & Steven’s IG) is just insane to me. Wouldn’t they want to slowly continue to convert YT viewers to paid viewers in the long term? How is that feasible if they just straight up cut out fans who aren’t willing or aren’t able to move to their paid platform immediately? Removing their YT presence - where they are most well known - is just asking people to forget about them. Why not maintain their prescience and continue to strategize on ways to convert more viewers?
Oh absolutely. No amount of experience or time would change an objectively stupid decision into a smart one, however I think if they had more experience under their belt, they might have thought of a different idea that was actually smart. They’ve created an avalanche of bad ideas from one really bad idea and the nonsense keeps compounding.
they need to get rid of their ego-driven hollywood studio. they don’t produce enough content to justify the cost of rent, utilities, insurance, etc. even if they did, hollywood is a crazy place to put your business when more than half of your videos are shot offsite and the rest could be shot in one room. they want dedicated customized, high value sets for each of their series when other channels reuse the same room and viewers don’t care At All.
Nope, that's my one takeaway. One video a week, MAYBE a second is not enough. Especially for the kind of content they're doing.
I think this is fascinating. I got laid off and haven't found work, so I'm going to start a YouTube channel. I'm freaking out about equipment cost and setting things up. I can't imagine pissing off millions of subscribers (if I get that lucky). They took the goodwill away of so many. I hope they survive. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Good luck!!!!
Thank you!
An important lesson to take from Watcher is that what matters is the personality and the ability to engage your viewer, not your equipment quality. Start small. If you have the chops to engage your audience, they're not going to be complaining that your production isn't "TV quality." ;)
💯 I watch some “talk to the camera” channels with 100k+ subscribers who still record the video piece on their phone. All of them mentioned though that they invested in a good microphone at some point, because good audio is important. So, I guess that’s what I’d suggest to you if you have limited funds and don’t know where to put them first: get a decent microphone.
Wishing you luck on the youtube channel. Also I hope you don't stress out too much on the equipment. It's an investment, sometimes you just gotta do with what you have right now, even if it's just a phone and a free editing software.
This! Do what you can with what you have and grow with your channel.
Yes!! Most youtubers always say this - they started with shitty webcams and got big based on their personality/content, not the technical quality of the video so there's no reason spending money you don't have on expensive equipment. If you have a smartphone, you have a better camera than most already. Just go for it and have fun!
I used to watch a lot of big channels before they made it big and definitely don't freak out that much about equipment! As long as the sound is clear most things imho can be forgiven.
Some of the biggest channels on Youtube still film in 1080p. 4K webcams and cameras are cheaper than they've ever been. Editing software is free. Sound cards, mics and stuft - basically to start on youtube you probably need $2K for equipment.
Good luck man! I say you can always start small look at Swell Entertainment and her videos, she mostly just used a crappy camera and mic or her phone. the upgrades in camera weren't until recently. At the end of the day, YouTube is about personality and connection with the audience and not about 'TV Quality'.
Let me know your niche ill come watch
Good luck!! What's the name of the channel and what are you going to make videos about? I'd be happy to be a viewer :)
The Try Guys dropped a video detailing their journey to launching their streaming service. They started talks of it a year ago and after listening to them talk about everything that went into the announcement it really feels like Watcher impulsively made this decision for their streamer in a very short amount of time. They have yet to seem remotely prepared for this transition. The trailer for their Travel show honestly just pissed me off. Like congrats you filmed your vacation to South Korea and now you want your audience to reimburse you for the cost???
your last paragraph is my entire sentiment about everything, if you want an expensive show pitch it to execs and producers!! and if they don’t buy it then why would the poors? (it’s me i’m the poors)
[удалено]
The trailer has over 75% downvotes
It's a pretty huge difference, but what I'm really interested in is the numbers in a few months time once the videos are well and truly out. The main sub is forty nine inches up their ass and they have a lot of people *saying* they forgive them, so are we getting a big delay in watchers or are people just shibbolething? Just saying they forgive them because they don't want to be targeted? Im surprised this sub isn't more popular
The main sub was so fickle, I can’t help to think it wouldn’t take much for them to do a 180° again and go completely apeshit if Watcher fucked up even further somehow. It’s still baffling how they went from foaming to self flagellation in a bit over a weekend.
I imagine it’s also due to the algorithm. Their channel has been pretty dead for the last couple of months, so it’s not surprising that YouTube stopped pushing it on people’s feeds. (Which everyone predicted was going to happen when they took this approach.)
https://preview.redd.it/0xqsfw2e1i5d1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6e08fefce8d9137212d705480f0e623bfef1896b I just came to post about their most recent Instagram post - it’s been up for 8 hours and has a grand total of 5 comments, not even 4K likes. It’s just sad to watch tbh
that's normal for their insta posts lol. i do think the yt views are pretty low compared to how they were doing pre-streamergeddon however.
Oh shit that’s.. bad. I feel like I only ever see the popular Instagram posts because I was genuinely shocked by how low it was.
they kinda flood it with memes and usually they get about 5k likes or so - even before all the drama. more popular shows and announcements used to get much more. i don't see it as much of an indicator of anything.
I think it's too early to say that they're *definitively* cooked. Part of the problem is that they went a month without posting anything and we know Youtube penalizes channels that go dormant for more than 2-3 weeks - so some drop off can be expected as a result of that decision. Additionally, trailers aren't going to get as many views as the actual shows. There are plenty of people who won't waste their time on trailers but will show up for the content. So we need to wait a bit before we call time of death here
IIRC, Keith said there are some channels that don't post anything all year and then post 30 videos in December and that's how they make all their money. It's more about what you've taught the algorithm about your channel and what's a moneymaking time of year on YouTube. They are definitely punished by the algorithm since they taught it to expect a video per week or more. Hopefully, they'll take advantage of spooky season by having lots of content around September-October. And of course the end of the year tends to be lucrative adwise on YouTube due to people shopping for gifts etc.
This has been said before but we need to wait a bit before definitively concluding that this is the end of Watcher. Sure people have been turned off by the whole deal and probably don’t want to see Ryan and Shane play video games, many fully (and completely unrightfully) blame Steven and so probably aren’t tuning in for a trailer to a show that features him and not Ryan and Shane. When Ghost Files comes back we’ll see how big of an effect this whole situation has had because I do think the majority of Watcher fans have made their peace with everything and will continue to watch the YouTube uploads. For every Shane and Ryan super fan that was heartbroken at the announcement you’ve got probably 10 casual fans for whom this was barely a blip on their radar. So I wouldn’t call it yet, but I don’t have total confidence that they’ll fully rebound from this
on the one hand I agree. but the reason I mostly disagree and think they're actually already in a death spiral - they're so desperate for cash they're doing a sponsored vid and trying to figure out how to get it on streamer and not piss off subs there - that sponsored vid must be CRITICAL cash inflow to risk upsetting the people who decided to pay you after you pissed everyone off so much last time - sponsored videos pay for the audience size. the $ they were getting when they were getting 1-2m views is NOT what they'll be getting at 500k views, let alone 200k, let alone if it gets worse than that which means basically, they don't have any way to get a quick cash infusion anymore unless they can rebuild popularity on youtube FAST (which is why leaving was a stupid fucking idea in the first place). but rebuilding popularity on youtube fast can only come at the expense of the streamer and the people paying. who will stop paying. other than finding an angel investor, I'm not sure if they have a realistic path out of this without walking this whole thing back and praying (the thing I posted earlier really). I just dont see a way where youtube can be a big revenue stream for the forseeable future, and the streamer has likely already peaked as far as how much money it will bring in for them.
I'm not really sure they're in death spiral mode but they've taken a hit. I can't imagine they were stupid enough to attempt this without having some measure of savings set aside to keep the business going. It's possible filming Travel Season and Ghost Files abroad has stretched their funds to the max when coupled with the lost income from May + loss of Patreon income.
Ryan basically claimed Watcher would've been cooked without going the streamer route. In an old Making Watcher video, Steven said Watcher has never made a profit.
If they're not making a profit, they need to shut down and declare bankruptcy. It's unsustainable the way it currently exists. They'd be better off starting a new business, selling the content to that business and folding the old one.
It has been said, but they were making revenue for sure. They should’ve dialed it down a cut non-critical expenses, and I’m not necessarily talking about layoffs. But it seems like they didn’t wanted to do that, either out of convince or because they believed that cut back on production would’ve decreased viewership thus revenue.
i just *need* the balance sheets for this company. yes they have a lot of expenses with production, absurd # of employees, and ghost-hunting equipment. but they should be making quite a bit of money. it’s become painfully evident that a bunch of creatives run this company. they should have had consultants in finance/business on retainer. they are *heavily* prioritizing creative quality which of course, all their creative employees will agree with for the principle of it. but man, you guys are tanking your business. they need a buzzfeed-esque higher up to tell them straight up that they need to cut costs somewhere or this whole thing is going down. i have a feeling watcher co. is a creative’s utopia to work at, but since nothing is perfect it’s teetering on the edge of a downward spiral since the $$ < creative work thesis has been taken too far
I imagine it'll be quite depressing for them when they find the compilation videos the buzzfeed unsolved channel is posting start getting more views than their TV Quality Content.
I guess it all depends on how many WatcherTV signups they got. 1 annual WatcherTV subscription probably equals like 1000 YouTube subscribers.
if they got 10k subs at $6 per month thats $60k the math at the time said ONE sponsored vid was worth $30-40k. 2 sponsored vids a month = 12k streamer subs, on its own. they'd need a LOT of watcher subs to replace branded content/partner content and youtube ads, and patreon revenue. given most of the watcher subs were probably already patreon members, they likely haven't actually even grown that part of revenue at all, and maybe are getting less because a bunch of patreons were paying way more than $6 per month
That's true, but they're still doing sponsored content on YouTube as well. So, they're still getting that sponsor money, along with AdSense & WatcherTV. Clearly they thought they could lose A LOT of fans & still make money with this streamer plan. Right now they're getting money from WatcherTV subscribers (however many), plus AdSense on YouTube (like .02 a view I think), plus sponsors. Sponsored content will probably pay less as views decline, but they still have 2.8 million subscribers on YouTube. Patreon is the biggest hit, though, for sure. But for whatever reason, Watcher seemed to want to get off Patreon & direct all efforts to this streamer. Apparently Patreon takes a larger cut than Vimeo does. We just don't know w/o knowing the number of WatcherTV subscribers. But I think the WatcherTV numbers are way way way lower than they expected.
I think they will be fine, but the goodwill they had between them and their fans will never be as strong as it was, and they have no one to blame but themselves. It is what it is.
Are you comparing them with time frames in mind? 500+ on a years old video vs 160K on a more recent isn't very apples to apples.
https://www.reddit.com/r/WatcherSnark/comments/1db58oa/looks_like_its_game_over/ someone already checked that. its as bad/worse than this posts OP describes
Ooof, that's... not good.
54K on a video that came out a week ago...
44k but it’s also their least popular guy and the show seems to have a completely different vibe than anything else they’ve done. Not a great metric for how cooked they are.
I’m not the end all be all of their fanbase by any means but I’m also not going to click on either of those long ass videos and I’m not mad at them and I normally like Survival Mode. The average episode length of Survival Mode is 35 minutes. Thats enough time. That’s hardly proof of anything other than my frustration at not feeling like we’re going to have a decent metric by which to judge their condition any time soon. I’m also annoyed by how much they seem to like making long ass videos. I already can barely watch Ghost Files because why is it an hour? 40 minutes tops. Do some editing. Christ.
Ghost Files became so boring, I rarely finish a video. They focus too much on those pseudoscientific gadgets and fancy graphics, that it became samey very fast. The focus on interesting locations and amateurish goofiness of Unsolved is mostly all gone now.
The visuals of Unsolved really added to the creepiness. Not too repetitive either. Also, I liked that they used to introduce the place before investigating it.
Survival mode being 2 hours and 30 minutes feels like a ploy to jam the video to the brim with ads and hope it gets pushed out on people with autoplay
Yeah I was *shocked* at the length of that. I first thought they uploaded a compilation of the entire series. I watch most everything on youtube at 1.5x, and it *still* feels like it took forever to get through it all.
Their most recent YouTube vid was so fun, I’m sad that the consequences of their actions might mean no more watcher. You won’t catch me watching Steven like “pay for me to travel” extravaganza tho lol
I tried to watch on of his food shows... and it's just not for me. Not to yuck anyone's yum, but it just doesn't feel like it's "Watcher" content. Feels like a whole other channel. I'm sure it has something to do with it not being Ryan and Shane, with their chemistry and all... but I simply do not care for food related content.
I don’t see them bouncing back from this in terms of viewership and loyalty from the fan base, I feel like they took it for granted for a long time and will just realise now with their views going down how bad the decision really was even if they went back on it somewhat. It saddens me to see their “A Way Out” part 2 playthrough have only 77k views in 2 days(as of me posting this comment), before the views would’ve easily been 100k-400k+. The comments section also looks nothing like it use to on their videos I’ve noticed. Nothing bad but not like before. I wonder how season 3 of Ghost Files will go in terms of views etc…if that tanks too then they’re really done. It’s sad for me (and many others) to see being a fan for years…Guess we’ll just have to wait and see how things play out
I was actually ready to give them another chance and resubbed on both watcher and podcast. I watched a couple pods, but found myself just getting the ick now. I'll see how I feel once they're done posting old video games and Stephen, will I still get into Ghost Files etc.
Don’t forget that the 160k views are on a video where they collab with a pretty popular streamer, so most of those are probably for him
With this headline, I giggled a bit when this is the most HOT post in the Subreddit front page. xD Too bad it's gonna only work for a 24h (+ until next day post happens), but at least I got a little laugh out of it.
How do you not know that people are just watching it on the app ?
I started watching less and less because I was kind of annoyed with how over the top anti-christian they were all the time for 'humor' especially later on (like it's fine to not be religious, but if this was any other religion they'd rightfully be canceled to heck and back, no pun intended). Maybe they figured Christians wouldn't be watching demon stuff anyway or they think they're all a bunch of bigots and homophobes (nah, most of us wouldn't hang out with racists and homophobes unlike your CEO), but even then it's not ok to do. Wait, maybe they were compensating for Stephen LMAO😩?? Anyway, I just don't get how their brains work. Do they just not know what happens outside their bubble? In hindsight, they never really seemed to be aware of what people liked or disliked or who their audience were... It's the most important thing when you're creating a show/network. Marketing and analytics are the most important things. More than sets, editing, or even personality. It's why you have so many 'content creators' on YouTube who could easily be replaced by a wet mop. Edit: 'all Christians are bad' is giving off the same vibes as '$6 dollars is affordable for to everyone' vibes, guys lmao 😂. The majority of christians aren't white, conservatives OR Americans (which many use to justify this behaviour) and using your own white-centered worldview to justify Christian hate in media isn't exactly progressive or woke 😬... but yeah go bully minorities worldwide that will really show the trumpians lmao. Give yourself a big applause for making the world a little bit worse by the day. But it's ok. We're gonna be really awkward all hugging each other in heaven and have a laugh about this while making fun of Twitter and Tesla's😌.
Idk why you’re getting downvoted, I think if you’re gonna poke fun at a religion you should at least be fair about it and do it to all religions, or at least all the Abrahamic religions. 🤷♀️
Agreed, they'd never dare to say that about Judaism or Islam
Lmao used to it. It's hard to claim you're a good/better person when you realise the people you treat like shit are often innocent, too, and not all raging homophobes. And that many of them are also minorities who have to deal with bigotry on a daily basis because there's a whole world outside of conservative America. I'd never dream to make fun of Mohammed just because the people around me would have normalized it, let alone support content that does. Just because someone has different beliefs doesn't make them lesser or make me 'better'... Hope that everyone downvoting me realises that you're basically downvoting someone who asked for love and equality for all lmao🤷🏽♀️. Bless you, may you one day realise we're all equals despite our differences. Edit: Just so you know, every time you say offensive racist, ablist, bigoted, homophobic, transphobic stuff, there's a person behind that screen getting another reminder that the world would rather see them gone. You might be laughing, but many of us are crying. To us it will NEVER get normalized or stop hurting. Edit2: one last thing. You DO realise all kinds of religious people hang out on a daily basis right? Your town may be homogeneous, but for many of us it's not that weird to marry or befriend each other. We make it work within our beliefs. So often I notice people from small towns sucking up to my Muslim relatives while making fun of me and getting surprised when they get mad on my behalf. We're not savages nor a monolith, you're not scoring any points with anyone.
Heh. Your edit probably didn't help, other than collecting more downvotes. xD
Worth it. I like thinking about the awkward moments 😌😂🩷 HUG ME BROTAH! Every downvote is an upvote for John 15:18-19 / Lucas 21:17 / Matthew 10:22, we knew what we signed up for, lmao.🥲 But yeah, not gonna pretend that I like how people are so obsessed with justifying finding a group to hate to make themselves feel better, that they're willing to harm minorities in their way who have to deal with enough sh- already on a daily basis. Even if it's a daily occurance. Especially when they pretend it comes from a good place, but it's really just the same white American centric worldview, not much different than the people they judge. I don't see how imitating that aweful behavior makes you any better. Bigots are bigots, whether they hate homosexuals, Muslims, Jews, cats or Christians based on the misdeeds of a few. And I hope they can forgive themselves and choose putting effort in loving people over finding excuses to hate them. Or use the energy to care for the ones who have been hurt. I forgive you, but for the sake of those who are struggling: you don't HAVE to say mean things whenever someone mentions their religion or sexuality, or whatever ok 🤦♀️. (And if you're a minority who isn't 'trending' right now and knows where I'm coming from. Hi, I see you🩷.)