Watcher Entertainment

Before I begin today's topic, I want to briefly mention that Lee-Anne is safe at home after 19 days in the hospital. I won't go into it much more, as I don't intend for this to be the type of thing where I share every intimate detail on the blog. But since I let you all know what was happening, I thought I should at least mention that we got to the other side of it safely.

Anyway, let's get into today's discussion.

Probably my biggest guilty pleasure is Youtube. I don't do much in the way of social media, I've always been hesitant to engage with new technologies. I didn't have a cell phone until I went to college at the age of 22. When I got one it was a flip phone, archaic even then. The only platform I use for communication is Facebook, which got big while I was a teenager and is now known as the platform for old people. I scroll Reddit, but haven't posted anything there for years. I've got an Instagram I barely use. I briefly had an account on Twitter, which I believe has now been deleted for inactivity, and I don't use any of the doppelganger platforms like Threads. I've done two stints with Snapchat on request of others, but the app is now deleted. I've never been on Ticktock. I don't do Twitch, Discord, Tumblr or anything like that. My preferred way of communicating online is Blogger. 

The only predominant video platform I use is Youtube. While still successful, even it's developing a reputation as being for old people. This is due to the fact that it promotes long-form media instead of skits, and because it uses horizontal display. This makes it better for laptops and desktops, as opposed to Ticktock's vertical display, which is better for smart phones.

But Youtube has been keeping relevant. It has short-form vertical display options called Shorts, and its algorhythms have become sophisticated enough to curate individualized pages that maximize engagement.

I'm a big critic of algorhythms. I don't think they have the best interests of their consumers in mind, and I think that a big part of the polarization we're seeing in society today is due to being immersed with content designed specifically for ourselves. It's been proven, for example, that Youtube doesn't just push stuff that it thinks you'll enjoy. It also does it for things that you will hate. This is because people are perverse and will give attention to things that shock and horrify. This often leads to suggestions of people that you will resonate with, as well as poor representations of people on the other side of the issues you care about. This reinforces personal bias and leads to the opinion that everyone that disagrees with you is crazy.

This isn't a new phenomenon. When I was a kid, my mom told me that "the news" should be called "bad news" because it wasn't an accurate representation of the experience of life. It just covers the worst elements of it. 

What is new is the level of sophistication that media companies have in their ability to target people. Back in the day, we had a term called "click bait". This was when an article or video would present itself as something it wasn't, because even though they knew it wouldn't satisfy the consumer, it would cause them to click on it, which was the metric for which companies determined success. Nowadays, that isn't even necessary. With autoplay, the "click" is determined by how long you look at it, and this impacts what the algorhythm will offer you. It's "observe bait".

As bad as that is, there are reasons that I often prefer Youtube over traditional media. For example, despite being much larger in scale than it used to be, the people developing content are still relatively small and feel more down to Earth.

The other day, I asked myself, "If the algorhythm were to disappear, which channels would I still watch?" I pondered that, and decided on a handful of channels that I might visit if I needed a quick dopamine hit, but ultimately wouldn't follow or bother to keep up with. I found there were only two channels that I look forward to and keep their upload schedule in mind.

The first one is NFKRZ, which is hosted by a displaced Russian immigrant who escaped his home country at the dawning of the war with Ukraine. This is a small-scale production that mostly consists of him talking to a camera. He does his own editing and other than his girlfriend occasionally filming when they're outside, he doesn't have any real help. I don't have any special passion for Russian politics or culture, but this is just an introspective and humble guy navigating a complicated life journey.

The other channel that I specifically go out of my way for is Watcher Entertainment, and while it's taken me a bit to get here, it's this one that I want to talk about. I usually don't bother talking about drama in popular media, but as I've just established, it's one of my two favourite channels, so I feel a certain investment.

Unlike NFKRZ, Watcher is larger in scale, more polished, with dedicated series', and more similar overall to traditional television. It's a company started by three personalities that got their start on Buzzfeed: Ryan Bergara, Shane Medej, and Steven Lim.

If you don't know Buzzfeed, they're probably the most notorious example of a media company that used clickbait tactics. On their Youtube channel, they hired a massive number of creatives that all competed to establish themselves. Eventually, most of the more successful ones felt they could stand on their own feet and set out on their own. This included the three founders of Watcher.

While on Buzzfeed, Ryan and Shane were known for their Unsolved series. This involved the two of them going to locations known to be haunted and trying to collect evidence of ghosts. If you've seen most ghost hunting shows, you'll understand that they are usually obviously faked. However, the thing that distinguished this particular show was that Shane was a skeptic. He didn't believe in ghosts and nothing throughout the series run would sway him. Also, the content and evidence was far more understated and subtle, giving enough to titilate the believers while allowing enough room for skeptics to maintain their disbelief.

This means that many episodes would be them poking around a dusty abandoned building, only catching a few bumps in the night that would leave even the believers unimpressed. During these shoots, the two guys would goof around with each other, as they put it "Substituting giggles for ghouls".

Fans that sided with Shane identified themselves as "Shaniacs" and those on Ryan's end were called "Boogaras". People that didn't identify one way or the other were invited to refer to themselves as "Shitfish". They tried to reel that one back a few times but the phrase stuck, with many people proud to call themselves Shitfish.

I'm a Boogara by the way. Originally that was the norm, but as Shane's presence continued to distinguish the series, it eventually kind of became the ghost show for skeptics.

Ryan offered the series a sense of grandeur, while Shane offered a sense of legitimacy with his scroutiny. Because the show was as understated as it was, when they did come across something legitimately spooky, it felt much more impactful. This was because they'd developed a sense of trust that other ghost shows just didn't have.

Kind of a wholesome aspect of the series was that, even though they avidly disagreed with each other and did a lot of mutual teasing, they still obviously respected and liked each other. It felt like they were modeling how people can disagree while still being friends

They also had a True Crime series that they backed away from due to the sensitive nature of some of the cases.

Steven's Buzzfeed series was called Worth It, which he co-hosted with a man named Andrew. In it, they would try three meals at drastically different price points and at the end decide what they thought was the most worth it at its given price. So generally there would be a fast casual place, a sit down restaurant, and a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

It wasn't really a food critic show though, in that they never gave a bad review. Each location was vetted and they never went anywhere if there was a chance they wouldn't like it. It was just a feel good show about appreciating food and vicariously experiencing lifestyles that you wouldn't normally have access to, whether that be because of location or finances.

So these three guys split away from Buzzfeed and start their own channel, Watcher Entertainment. They all started as CEOs, but after Ryan and Shane's projects proved more successful, they took the helm as the lead entertainment while Steven adopted the position of sole CEO and did more behind the scenes work.

Steven's comparable lack of success was unsurprising to me. Probably more important than the premise of their respective series' was the dynamic they had with their co-hosts, and while Ryan and Shane had each other, Steven didn't have Andrew.

New shows that they saw have success: 

• Puppet History, a gameshow-inspired series based on history. Spearheaded by Shane, co-hosted by Ryan. Spiritual successor of Shane's short-lived solo project Ruining History
• Ghost Files, a spiritual successor to Buzzfeed Unsolved: Supernatural, in which Ryan and Shane explore allegedly haunted locations in search of evidence of ghosts
• Mystery Files, a spiritual successor to Buzzfeed Unsolved: True Crime, where they dialed back the aspect of crime in favour of generally mysterious phenomenon
• Dish Granted, the only show Steven managed to get a little traction, where he tries to make the best and most expensive version of a dish requested by a guest in under 24 hours
• Top 5 Beatdown, where Ryan, Shane, and a guest list their top 5 choices of a given topic.
•  Are You Scared, in which Ryan reads spooky stories to try and get the better of his stoic friend Shane. 
• Too Many Spirits, where Ryan and Shane get drunk and read scary stories sent in by fans.
• Survival Mode, where Ryan and Shane play horror video games

They also have a couple of podcasts of moderate success and a number of discontinued series'.

My personal favourite was Social Distancing D&D. It happened during the pandemic, and was just the three of them and one of their behind the scenes employees playing Dungeons and Dragons over Zoom during the pandemic.

Over the course of four years, they managed to climb to three million subscribers, which is pretty successful. Recently, they announced that something big was coming, and set a timer for when they would go public with it.  Very much framed as something to get excited about.

So the timer runs down and a video titled "Goodbye Youtube" is released. It starts off with a reflection from each of them about their respective careers, played over soft piano music. Eventually, they anounce their next move as a company.

They're moving all their content onto an independent streaming platform. Members to be charged $5.99 a month, or $59.99 a year.

This is insane. They expect a monthly subscription for access to content that had previously been free. To reiterate, they are in my top two channels that I enjoy. I can afford $6 a month, and I never even considered subscribing.

I'm not alone, the fanbase has been united in disdain and confusion over the decision. Their dislike to like ratio on the announcement is about 80/20. As of this posting 70,000 people have unsubscribed. All the reaction Youtubers are covering the story.

The reason they cite for their decision is that as they are, they are beholden to advertisers. They would like to move somewhere they can cater only to fans. They say that they want to increase production value, that it's always been their goal to be a TV show, and that TV isn't suited for Youtube.

They did announce the spiritual successor of the Worth It series, called Travel Season. It is to air on their streaming service, complete with former co-host Andrew and cameraman Adam. They said that they will continue to release trailers and season premiers on their Youtube channel, but that all other content will be held exclusively on the streaming service.

It appears that there is a disparity between what they want to do and what their fans want from them. Almost all of their most successful shows have been based around Ryan and Shane hanging out and chatting. Their main draw is the parasocial relationship they offer, not their production value.

A parasocial relationship is when fans feel more closely connected to a public figure than they actually are. This isn't a new phenomenon. Way back when the show Cheers was airing, people tuned in to watch people interact in the place "where everyone knows your name".

There is a term called a "Third Place". It means somewhere that you go to relax that isn't home or work. Because of everything being monetized and the rise of home entertainment among other factors, these places are becoming more and more scarce. People tuned in to watch Cheers to feel like they were a part of that Third Place.

This is the case for Ryan and Shane, and of Steven and Andrew. We live in what is known as a "loneliness epidemic" which is impacting men especially hard. I'm not exempt. When I watched two guys with similar values banter, it was like I was vicariously experiencing part of the friendship. Remember when I said that part of the appeal of Youtube over traditional media was the low scale? That worked for them. Saying they need higher production to give the fans what they want is crazy.

As far as finances go, it's been pointed out that they've been fumbling pretty hard. They have 25 staff, which is apparently way higher than they need, they moved to an office in LA, and in general they've been spending exhorbitant amounts on set designs and other things that no one asked for or wanted. 

Despite that, their financial situation should be sound. You see, this isn't the first time they've put their content behind a paywall. They have something called a Patreon, which hosts exclusive content for paid membership. They have been relatively successful with this while still releasing free videos to Youtube. Now, the people that are already paying between $5-$25 for a Patreon subscription are only getting a 40% discount on the streaming platform. They also have a successful merch store and live shows in addition to their numerous ads and sponsors. It can be easy to forget how big these channels can be behind the scenes.

They said they set the membership fee at $6 because they wanted "Anyone and everyone to be able to afford it". First off, that is verifiably untrue. We are in a global recession and many people are living paycheque to paycheque. Some people are unhoused, but in our modern society where everyone has a cell phone and most have access to public WiFi, they'd have been able to access the free content but likely not the stuff behind a paywall.

But even for people that can afford it, why would they pay a monthly subscription fee for access to one Youtube channel? In our present climate, most people are paying multiple subscription fees already. They've placed themselves in direct competition with Netflix, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime etc.

But do you know what those places have that Watcher doesn't? A catalogue of classic films and shows spanning across decades, as well as original, exclusive content made by their platform. Watcher has four years of content, made by one team, with new releases once or twice a week.

I've seen other Youtubers show what the new Watcher streaming platform looks like, and it looks good. Like, weirdly good. It looks comparable to Netflix.

But the fact that it looks that good begins to feel a little creepy. Like, if you went onto Netflix and every show was done by the same three people, that would be weird right? If you clicked on your TV and it was the same three people on every channel that would just be... weird.

And how do they expect to grow the fan base? Usually, you attract attention to yourself on recomendation of a friend, or because an algorhythm suggested it, or because you saw it in a catalogue in proximity to other things you're interested in. No one is going to accidentally find them behind a paywall. I guess they're relying on word of mouth from the small fraction of people willing to pay for it, and otherwise just through trailers and season premiers on Youtube? I don't think it's doable.

They should have tried to just get a show on Netflix or some alternate streaming service with an established catalogue. And if they couldn't swing that, that should have informed them of their chances of making it as an independent streaming service.

Most of the backlash has been directed at Steven. I find this unsurprising, since he's the CEO so he'll be perceived as the one with the most decision making power. Also, Ryan and Shane's positions as faces of the organization have them primed to be sympathetic.

I can understand using Travel Season as bait to pull in an audience. All of the previous legacy shows proved wildly succesful when given their spiritual sequals on Watcher, and Worth It was like 50% of their legacy on Buzzfeed. As I mentioned before, the missing component was Andrew, but now they've got him, so it seems natural.

But it's been pointed out that it's a little offputting to ask for money from their audience, and then use that same money on intentionally overpriced meals. It was more palatable when Steven was just a guy who was sent to fancy restaurants by a faceless media corporation, getting his mind blown by food that he wouldn't normally be able to afford. But now he's the CEO of his own company and he's taking money from the poor to feed himself. It's a different vibe, you know?

Anyway, wow, I talked a while. Believe it or not I could keep going. We'll see if they wind up backtracking or if they push forward. I think all they can do is damage control at this point, but after they slandered their ads and sponsors, I don't know if that revenue stream will be as viable. I'm sure they've lost a good chunk of subscribers permanently already. Totally boneheaded move on their behalf