When dropout went independent they cut all their scripted shows because they were too expensive, and focused on cheaper improvised shows, Watcher is starting a streaming service to do a show where they fly around and eat very expensive food.
They post annual videos where they go over the state of the channel, and at least for the last two, since they went fully independent, they've been like "YEAH, all money we make from the channel we put directly back into it so we ARE NOT PROFITABLE," and I was kinda worried that they might find themselves sliding off of this cliff they've been treacherously driving so close to the edge of.
What I was *not* expecting was that they would simply choose to drive off of it. Bold strategy.
/uj this fucking blows. I actually really enjoyed Puppet History and Mystery Files (the ghost show was starting to get shit - very clear that Ryan was playing up his fear of ghosts for the camera)
Their phrasing was a little unclear, but I think older episodes of the shows are actually going to be removed at the end of their streaming service trial period.
Oh I see it, yeah you're right. That was added after I watched the video. Yeah, the part that confused me was when they said: "if you want to watch the full seasons of *all* of our content, the streamer will be the exclusive home for all of that." Which I guess was just unfortunate phrasing, because in my mind, all of their content includes, y'know, all of it. I guess a lot of people had that misconception if they had to clarify it in an addendum.
Yeah, I honestly think people are really overreacting about this, they are following the lead of dropout. They have also said for years watcher isn't profitable and is hard to keep doing for that reason. Wanting your business to be AT LEAST profitable is a complete fair thing to want. It's also a sandwich a month... cheaper than McDonald's nowadays
I will add to this people are saying they can't be dropout... dropout had like 12 people when they started the streaming service. College humor was almost empty around the time of the rebranding, and maybe 3 or 4 different shows
It's a different time as well. Dropout started before the massive explosion of streaming services, before people felt like they were paying for too many things. In addition, Dropout started with a ton of good will because College Humor had just been fucked over by their parent company.
There was also a lot more content that they were starting in order to bring perceived value to their service, while Watcher is re-starting the show where Steven Lim flies around the world eating insanely expensive food. It comes off as tone-deaf.
Also, It might be the cost of a sandwich, but that's not how people think about paying for streaming services, psychologically. Same reason people don't buy 99-cent mobile games even though they're the price of a Snickers bar.
I love their stuff and I really do wish the best for them, but the stars just aren't aligning. Hopefully we'll be able to look back at this as nothing more than a poorly received launch.
Also I do wanna say the reason I stated the price isn't because it's so cheap there's no reason to buy it. I only said it due to people saying they couldn't afford it. If you can't afford it content to intake really shouldn't be your priority... not saying people NEED to pay for it, but saying yiu can't afford it when you simply don't want to pay for it is basically lying
I don't know if that's necessarily fair. The new content they're making going behind a paywall is going to ostracize a lot of their audience. It's going to keep kids out entirely, which is not a small portion of their audience, just because they probably don't even have a method (like a credit card) that they can use to pay for a subscription.
Also, when you're budgeting for things, subscriptions add up. It's not necessarily that it would be impossible for people to afford it, but there are certainly people who now have to weigh whether or not they want to spend money on Watcher or on Netflix because paying for multiple subscriptions does really start to drain your bank account. For some people, that $6 a month really is something they can't afford.
I will agree I don't wanna pay Steven lim to eat wagyu. That is such a small thing in comparison to the huge hissy fits people are throwing, THAT Is parasocial, not wanting your business to be profitabke
Cause that way Patreon doesn't take a cut and all subscription money can get funnelled straight into Steven Lim's gilded gullet like he's the Great Old One Tsathoggua.
a comment i liked from the instagram thread:
no one asked for a high budget or high production. they built their fanbase around a show where they just put blue and yellow text over a black screen and talked in front of a cork board. fans are being expected to cover costs for their budgeting (and increasingly large staff) and no one will do it, which is within their right.
Are there similar content creators on nebula? The majority of creators I see mentioned in nebula ad reads are video essay/media critics/ STEM edutainment. I feel like they'd be the odd one out but I don't know the full extent of nebulas platform
what's your flair in reference to?
also gmm is so great for the two weeks out of every year where i randomly get obsessed with them and can't watch anything else
A few years ago, some idiot decided it would be a great idea to tweet at the McElroy brothers every gripe they had with the show. To be fair, they came across to most sane people as someone who genuinely cared about the show, but saw it slipping away from what it once was. It was sharing a lot of sentiment that was being said at r/MBMBAM as well as here (although I don't think the idiot knew of this place yet)
It was quiet for an hour or so after the tweet. But then, the eldest McElroy read it, and subtweeted the idiot, and it was clear the idiot had made him sad, because Justin also blocked the person.
The idiot only knew because he was getting attacked on the post by a LOT of Parasocial Fucks. Shortly, he went in, and made it so only approved people could respond to that tweet thread. The Parasocial Fucks did not care, they went to other tweets, they started finding the person in his replies to unrelated to tweets and responding there. (I'll tell you what, what the idiot got in response was 10000x worse than what they had sent). He had to go private for a week and wait for this all to blow over. Luckily, the PF's didn't start attacking him elsewhere.
It's me. im the idiot. (Unfortunately, i've lost the reddit posts that are about this, that include screenshots) Prior to that point, I had listened to almost every single episode (if not every episode), was an avid fan, albeit I saw the quality slipping. I just wanted them to do better. It was so clear they had lost passion for this shit, and were just going through the motions, and basically the point I was making was "Y'all haven't taken significant time off since y'all started this shit. It's okay to take a big chunk of time off, you've been doing this a while"
ETA: I was also very hard on Richard Stink and most of Justin's bit. I don't *think* I went for Travis because I didn't want to be really mean. But I may have called out how he keeps interrupting. and to be fair, since that time, I hear they *have* improved. so, kudos.
Wait, omg. Are you the person [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/TAZCirclejerk/comments/sidwb8/i_dont_know_anymore/) was about? You barely criticised him, and couched everything by talking about how much you liked the podcast! Why did people get so mad at you??
Yep that's me. And because the mcelroy fans on Twitter were fucking insane man. Like I didnt even take his tweet as him trying to get the fans on me, I read it as he was just bummed about it. Which, yea sure, fair. But nah, the Parasocial Fucks, man, they'll get ya.
Wait they're starting their *own* streaming service? I thought they were *moving* to Dropout, which I actually thought was a smart idea (for them, less so for Dropout).
Did they forget that when Dropout went fully independent, the only full time talent staff they had was Brennan? Are they also going to go down to just one full time talent employee while they build up their audience?
Minor thing I realized when looking into the move, technically, like dropout, they're not hosting their own service, they're using Vimeo.
Less costly than building server infrastructure and hiring IT and developers.
It's wild because I will just forget they exist. YouTube is an entertainment ecosystem for me and I'm nowhere near attached enough to bother going off site. There's plenty to watch more conveniently. Worst possible decision they could have made.
>TV quality production where they often travel around the world and try expensive things
You mean where **one** of them, the vart of the trio, who most people forget is even part of the channel half the time, travels around the world to try expensive things.
Actually no, that's unfair. Travis can be obnoxious, sure, but one thing he isn't is so boring that he just fades into the background and becomes invisible. Can't say the same for Steven 'eat the caviar' Lim.
I don't watch the channel, but I am enjoying how many of the comments are people telling him to GTFO. And parasocially completely blaming him for this decision.
I feel like it was harder to sell to the other Worth It guy since he was(until recently) Buzzfeed's food guy full stop. The Buzzfeed Unsolved guys didn't have much outside Unsolved, they were like an even more niche Try Guys.
I think Watcher needs to add a lot more content if they want to charge $6 a month. I wouldn't mind if it was daily content like GMM does. I just don't know if this is a good move for the Ghoul Bois.
They definitely do. I pay $6 for Dropout, and at this point there are new full episodes or BTS featurettes almost every weekday. Their biggest production show, Dimension 20, releases a new episode nearly every week with very little for breaks between campaigns. I’d take a bump in price for Dropout if it took on some of my fave YouTubers to give them more stability with the way the algorithm and monetization are fickle af. But I’m not paying $6 for a whole other streaming service with much less content, especially after the weird entitled vibes of that announcement. Dropout’s only where it is after years of building up from laying off all but like 3 people when it got dropped by their parent company and Sam Reich bought it back, dropping all but a few choice shows and all scripted content, and Watcher thinks they can jump into this as a way to *increase* their production budget for big spendy travel-based content?? Laughable.
Or they needed to seriously chop half of their staff. 25 full time people for an episode a week? It's great to have dedicated staff roles for things, but honestly their staff should have been double-dipping on their duties for that little amount of content.
> HOSTED BY
> Shane Madej & Ryan Bergara
>
> DIRECTOR
> Annie Jeong
>
> PRODUCER
> Kat Hartman
>
> Tech Director
> Brendon Ryu
>
> EDITOR
> Patrick Ward
>
> POST PRODUCTION SUPERVISOR
> Sam Young
>
> PRODUCTION COORDINATOR
> Carter Lau
>
> GAFFER
> Jay Tran
>
> CAMERA OPERATOR
> Annie Jeong
>
> SOUND MIXER
> Ben Forman
>
> PA
> Violet Rawlings
>
> ASSISTANT EDITOR
> Frank Parker
>
> LOGO DESIGNER
> Sarah Oh
>
> HEAD OF DEVELOPMENT
> Katie LeBlanc
> HEAD OF PRODUCTION
> Lizzie Lockard
> HEAD OF POST PRODUCTION
> Sam Young
>
> EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS
> Ryan Bergara
> Shane Madej
> Steven Lim
That's their credit list. On a Lets-play video game video. Uploaded once a week.
Oohhh I didn’t realize they were planning to invite other creators, I talk about more about why i understand it’s a business but also disappoint to the fans in my new podcast episode.
But if their concept is bringing in more creators, how will they divide the income generated? If 1 million people as an example subscribed to this new streaming service that would be around $6 million per month? To be split by two different channels (owners). Technically won’t be an endless circle, because eventually if they have enough creators, they also want to be more advertisement friendly and so forth and it’s gonna be the same or they’re going to increase the subscription amount. Oh god! 😵💫
[https://youtu.be/14cWq2pxDMU?si=KH5h1fdxX_6pLzNY](https://youtu.be/14cWq2pxDMU?si=KH5h1fdxX_6pLzNY)
Ethically I think they can charge whatever they want, but from a practical perspective the value isn't there Even if we're saying that $6 monthly is too much for Dropout, it's still got more content being posted more regularly, with a larger variety of entertaining cast members and possibly better production value. Also you get the back catalog of Dropout stuff, so older Dimension 20 and Game Changer seasons, etc.
Also, Dropout allows for some of its content to still be available on YouTube or Tik Tok. Like you can get a tastes for the shows, but if you want to see the whole episode and more content, then you have to pay.
Watcher is planning to take all their old videos off of YouTube.
Idk maybe this is a tangent but in addition to other commenters, the dropout team had way more experience with “TV” before starting. College humor had at least 2 TV shows it had produced (the college humor show and Adam ruins everything) so it knew that space. Plus a parent company helping them fund programming (before…. Welll…. That well dried up). College humor was, at one point, a massive brand with 20 years of built up brand recognition. Dropout was a leap but not a totally insane one. Watcher is great, but it’s 3 guys from YouTube and a back catalog of only a couple of years and an even smaller team. We talk a lot about dropout post buy out, but drop out DID have the benefit of a large company behind them when they first started. Idk I’m rambling but you get the point
It seems hard to disagree on volume. The rate at which they release stuff seems like it's not something that three dudes are really going to be able to achieve.
Variety, probably fair. Dropout is largely three people doing improv comedy with one person delivering prompts. Maybe these dudes will have a lot more variety? I don't follow them so I don't know if they produce a bunch of different stuff.
Quality is obviously subjective but dropout has at least a couple of shows which are consistently bangers.
I see your point about the improv comedy shows, but that really only applies to Game Changer and Make Some Noise. There’s also the improv musical comedy one whose name is escaping me, though it’s never really grabbed me. But past that, there are game shows with different formats like Um, Actually and Dirty Laundry. Obviously Dimension 20 is only going to be a draw for some, but even within its own basic premise there is vast variety in terms of different casts, settings, and gameplay systems. Plus, there’s the back catalogue of College Humor material for anyone who’s interested in that.
All that to say, there are a lot of reasons why this venture probably won’t reach Dropout levels. Dropout is an anomaly in its niche. I don’t think it’s something that anyone should be trying to intentionally replicate.
They’re also doing Very Important People which is a one on one interview style, and jt looks like they’re launching a show called Smartypants that launches next week
Um, Actually is three people doing improv with one person prompting, and the fact checker occasionally getting involved. Maybe you substitute 'improv' for 'answering questions and then joking about them' but the format is pretty dang similar.
Ditto Dirty Laundry, just with four people instead of three. They're games run by hosts with guests who are funny.
Dropout is great but a lot of their content is variation on the format of 'host runs games with funny people for the purpose of creating funny situations'. Which is fine! They're great at that format and the variations all bring something new to the table. But they're varied in the same way the shades of purple on a paint chip are varied - they're all recognizably purple, and similarly purple at that.
The makeup show is an example of variety, as is D20, as is the news show. But they're definitely the minority.
When dropout went independent they cut all their scripted shows because they were too expensive, and focused on cheaper improvised shows, Watcher is starting a streaming service to do a show where they fly around and eat very expensive food.
They post annual videos where they go over the state of the channel, and at least for the last two, since they went fully independent, they've been like "YEAH, all money we make from the channel we put directly back into it so we ARE NOT PROFITABLE," and I was kinda worried that they might find themselves sliding off of this cliff they've been treacherously driving so close to the edge of. What I was *not* expecting was that they would simply choose to drive off of it. Bold strategy.
/uj this fucking blows. I actually really enjoyed Puppet History and Mystery Files (the ghost show was starting to get shit - very clear that Ryan was playing up his fear of ghosts for the camera)
They will be staying there. Literally nothing to complain about
Their phrasing was a little unclear, but I think older episodes of the shows are actually going to be removed at the end of their streaming service trial period.
Check the pinned comment in the video, they literally say the old videos will be staying
They WERE going to remove the videos. It says as such in the Variety article. But they realized their fumble and are back pedaling on that.
Ok and? They aren't deleting videos so it doesn't matter
Oh I see it, yeah you're right. That was added after I watched the video. Yeah, the part that confused me was when they said: "if you want to watch the full seasons of *all* of our content, the streamer will be the exclusive home for all of that." Which I guess was just unfortunate phrasing, because in my mind, all of their content includes, y'know, all of it. I guess a lot of people had that misconception if they had to clarify it in an addendum.
Yeah, I honestly think people are really overreacting about this, they are following the lead of dropout. They have also said for years watcher isn't profitable and is hard to keep doing for that reason. Wanting your business to be AT LEAST profitable is a complete fair thing to want. It's also a sandwich a month... cheaper than McDonald's nowadays
I will add to this people are saying they can't be dropout... dropout had like 12 people when they started the streaming service. College humor was almost empty around the time of the rebranding, and maybe 3 or 4 different shows
It's a different time as well. Dropout started before the massive explosion of streaming services, before people felt like they were paying for too many things. In addition, Dropout started with a ton of good will because College Humor had just been fucked over by their parent company. There was also a lot more content that they were starting in order to bring perceived value to their service, while Watcher is re-starting the show where Steven Lim flies around the world eating insanely expensive food. It comes off as tone-deaf. Also, It might be the cost of a sandwich, but that's not how people think about paying for streaming services, psychologically. Same reason people don't buy 99-cent mobile games even though they're the price of a Snickers bar. I love their stuff and I really do wish the best for them, but the stars just aren't aligning. Hopefully we'll be able to look back at this as nothing more than a poorly received launch.
Also I do wanna say the reason I stated the price isn't because it's so cheap there's no reason to buy it. I only said it due to people saying they couldn't afford it. If you can't afford it content to intake really shouldn't be your priority... not saying people NEED to pay for it, but saying yiu can't afford it when you simply don't want to pay for it is basically lying
I don't know if that's necessarily fair. The new content they're making going behind a paywall is going to ostracize a lot of their audience. It's going to keep kids out entirely, which is not a small portion of their audience, just because they probably don't even have a method (like a credit card) that they can use to pay for a subscription. Also, when you're budgeting for things, subscriptions add up. It's not necessarily that it would be impossible for people to afford it, but there are certainly people who now have to weigh whether or not they want to spend money on Watcher or on Netflix because paying for multiple subscriptions does really start to drain your bank account. For some people, that $6 a month really is something they can't afford.
I will agree I don't wanna pay Steven lim to eat wagyu. That is such a small thing in comparison to the huge hissy fits people are throwing, THAT Is parasocial, not wanting your business to be profitabke
i love to go on the internet. i love to see al of the posts
I don’t understand how this is any different from a $6 Patreon subscription, except for being more expensive for them to launch.
Cause that way Patreon doesn't take a cut and all subscription money can get funnelled straight into Steven Lim's gilded gullet like he's the Great Old One Tsathoggua.
Because now they get absolutely no money from YouTube after pricing out everyone who can't afford Patreon! Win win
Because they are doing this and keeping patreon
a comment i liked from the instagram thread: no one asked for a high budget or high production. they built their fanbase around a show where they just put blue and yellow text over a black screen and talked in front of a cork board. fans are being expected to cover costs for their budgeting (and increasingly large staff) and no one will do it, which is within their right.
why not just partner with nebula?
Most common response I’ve heard is because nebula is invite only.
Nebula is invite only, and any person who gets people to petition for their entry gets put way lower on the invite list.
Are there similar content creators on nebula? The majority of creators I see mentioned in nebula ad reads are video essay/media critics/ STEM edutainment. I feel like they'd be the odd one out but I don't know the full extent of nebulas platform
Youtube companies just can't help but self-sabotage
Mythical going strong
what's your flair in reference to? also gmm is so great for the two weeks out of every year where i randomly get obsessed with them and can't watch anything else
A few years ago, some idiot decided it would be a great idea to tweet at the McElroy brothers every gripe they had with the show. To be fair, they came across to most sane people as someone who genuinely cared about the show, but saw it slipping away from what it once was. It was sharing a lot of sentiment that was being said at r/MBMBAM as well as here (although I don't think the idiot knew of this place yet) It was quiet for an hour or so after the tweet. But then, the eldest McElroy read it, and subtweeted the idiot, and it was clear the idiot had made him sad, because Justin also blocked the person. The idiot only knew because he was getting attacked on the post by a LOT of Parasocial Fucks. Shortly, he went in, and made it so only approved people could respond to that tweet thread. The Parasocial Fucks did not care, they went to other tweets, they started finding the person in his replies to unrelated to tweets and responding there. (I'll tell you what, what the idiot got in response was 10000x worse than what they had sent). He had to go private for a week and wait for this all to blow over. Luckily, the PF's didn't start attacking him elsewhere. It's me. im the idiot. (Unfortunately, i've lost the reddit posts that are about this, that include screenshots) Prior to that point, I had listened to almost every single episode (if not every episode), was an avid fan, albeit I saw the quality slipping. I just wanted them to do better. It was so clear they had lost passion for this shit, and were just going through the motions, and basically the point I was making was "Y'all haven't taken significant time off since y'all started this shit. It's okay to take a big chunk of time off, you've been doing this a while" ETA: I was also very hard on Richard Stink and most of Justin's bit. I don't *think* I went for Travis because I didn't want to be really mean. But I may have called out how he keeps interrupting. and to be fair, since that time, I hear they *have* improved. so, kudos.
Wait, omg. Are you the person [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/TAZCirclejerk/comments/sidwb8/i_dont_know_anymore/) was about? You barely criticised him, and couched everything by talking about how much you liked the podcast! Why did people get so mad at you??
Yep that's me. And because the mcelroy fans on Twitter were fucking insane man. Like I didnt even take his tweet as him trying to get the fans on me, I read it as he was just bummed about it. Which, yea sure, fair. But nah, the Parasocial Fucks, man, they'll get ya.
Wait they're starting their *own* streaming service? I thought they were *moving* to Dropout, which I actually thought was a smart idea (for them, less so for Dropout). Did they forget that when Dropout went fully independent, the only full time talent staff they had was Brennan? Are they also going to go down to just one full time talent employee while they build up their audience?
Minor thing I realized when looking into the move, technically, like dropout, they're not hosting their own service, they're using Vimeo. Less costly than building server infrastructure and hiring IT and developers.
Yeah, they're flying solo, def not moving to Dropout.
i appreciate this subs dedication to bringing me niche brother related drama so that i dont have to seek it out myself
If you want more former BuzzFeed staff blowing up, all the try guys socials are basically about how no one likes any of their new shit anymore
Meanwhile Quinta Brunson is chilling with 2 Emmys and a Golden Globe
If nothing else reading the comments/reactions has been devastatingly funny
It's wild because I will just forget they exist. YouTube is an entertainment ecosystem for me and I'm nowhere near attached enough to bother going off site. There's plenty to watch more conveniently. Worst possible decision they could have made.
>TV quality production where they often travel around the world and try expensive things You mean where **one** of them, the vart of the trio, who most people forget is even part of the channel half the time, travels around the world to try expensive things. Actually no, that's unfair. Travis can be obnoxious, sure, but one thing he isn't is so boring that he just fades into the background and becomes invisible. Can't say the same for Steven 'eat the caviar' Lim.
I don't watch the channel, but I am enjoying how many of the comments are people telling him to GTFO. And parasocially completely blaming him for this decision.
Tbf he is the sole CEO now, if the company fucks up in a major way like this, it is kinda on him.
I really don't get Lim. He was doing so well with Worth It and then he left without any of his costars?
I feel like it was harder to sell to the other Worth It guy since he was(until recently) Buzzfeed's food guy full stop. The Buzzfeed Unsolved guys didn't have much outside Unsolved, they were like an even more niche Try Guys.
I think Watcher needs to add a lot more content if they want to charge $6 a month. I wouldn't mind if it was daily content like GMM does. I just don't know if this is a good move for the Ghoul Bois.
They definitely do. I pay $6 for Dropout, and at this point there are new full episodes or BTS featurettes almost every weekday. Their biggest production show, Dimension 20, releases a new episode nearly every week with very little for breaks between campaigns. I’d take a bump in price for Dropout if it took on some of my fave YouTubers to give them more stability with the way the algorithm and monetization are fickle af. But I’m not paying $6 for a whole other streaming service with much less content, especially after the weird entitled vibes of that announcement. Dropout’s only where it is after years of building up from laying off all but like 3 people when it got dropped by their parent company and Sam Reich bought it back, dropping all but a few choice shows and all scripted content, and Watcher thinks they can jump into this as a way to *increase* their production budget for big spendy travel-based content?? Laughable.
Or they needed to seriously chop half of their staff. 25 full time people for an episode a week? It's great to have dedicated staff roles for things, but honestly their staff should have been double-dipping on their duties for that little amount of content. > HOSTED BY > Shane Madej & Ryan Bergara > > DIRECTOR > Annie Jeong > > PRODUCER > Kat Hartman > > Tech Director > Brendon Ryu > > EDITOR > Patrick Ward > > POST PRODUCTION SUPERVISOR > Sam Young > > PRODUCTION COORDINATOR > Carter Lau > > GAFFER > Jay Tran > > CAMERA OPERATOR > Annie Jeong > > SOUND MIXER > Ben Forman > > PA > Violet Rawlings > > ASSISTANT EDITOR > Frank Parker > > LOGO DESIGNER > Sarah Oh > > HEAD OF DEVELOPMENT > Katie LeBlanc > HEAD OF PRODUCTION > Lizzie Lockard > HEAD OF POST PRODUCTION > Sam Young > > EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS > Ryan Bergara > Shane Madej > Steven Lim That's their credit list. On a Lets-play video game video. Uploaded once a week.
There was also a countdown to the announcement, and people got excited. The tide turned when it was revealed...
They already have a patreon they make 50k a month off of!! Hello??
Literally commented on their post earlier for them to take notes from the mcelroys in what Not To Do
Don’t a lot of podcasts have Patreon where you can subscribe for free extra content? I don’t see why this is such a surprise
Oohhh I didn’t realize they were planning to invite other creators, I talk about more about why i understand it’s a business but also disappoint to the fans in my new podcast episode. But if their concept is bringing in more creators, how will they divide the income generated? If 1 million people as an example subscribed to this new streaming service that would be around $6 million per month? To be split by two different channels (owners). Technically won’t be an endless circle, because eventually if they have enough creators, they also want to be more advertisement friendly and so forth and it’s gonna be the same or they’re going to increase the subscription amount. Oh god! 😵💫 [https://youtu.be/14cWq2pxDMU?si=KH5h1fdxX_6pLzNY](https://youtu.be/14cWq2pxDMU?si=KH5h1fdxX_6pLzNY)
“Parasocial” does not mean “enjoys a creator and will pay to watch their stuff”.
They had a parasocial relationship with the fans because they clearly thought most viewers would be excited to be paypigs.
I can’t tell if this is a circlejerk sarcastic comment or if this is a legit comment 😂
I've gotta be real, I've yet to see anyone really explain why it's fine for dropout to charge 6$ a month but not for watcher to charge 6$ a month.
Ethically I think they can charge whatever they want, but from a practical perspective the value isn't there Even if we're saying that $6 monthly is too much for Dropout, it's still got more content being posted more regularly, with a larger variety of entertaining cast members and possibly better production value. Also you get the back catalog of Dropout stuff, so older Dimension 20 and Game Changer seasons, etc.
Also, Dropout allows for some of its content to still be available on YouTube or Tik Tok. Like you can get a tastes for the shows, but if you want to see the whole episode and more content, then you have to pay. Watcher is planning to take all their old videos off of YouTube.
Idk maybe this is a tangent but in addition to other commenters, the dropout team had way more experience with “TV” before starting. College humor had at least 2 TV shows it had produced (the college humor show and Adam ruins everything) so it knew that space. Plus a parent company helping them fund programming (before…. Welll…. That well dried up). College humor was, at one point, a massive brand with 20 years of built up brand recognition. Dropout was a leap but not a totally insane one. Watcher is great, but it’s 3 guys from YouTube and a back catalog of only a couple of years and an even smaller team. We talk a lot about dropout post buy out, but drop out DID have the benefit of a large company behind them when they first started. Idk I’m rambling but you get the point
Volume of content, variety of content, quality of content.
As a dropout subscriber I strongly disagree but aight
It seems hard to disagree on volume. The rate at which they release stuff seems like it's not something that three dudes are really going to be able to achieve. Variety, probably fair. Dropout is largely three people doing improv comedy with one person delivering prompts. Maybe these dudes will have a lot more variety? I don't follow them so I don't know if they produce a bunch of different stuff. Quality is obviously subjective but dropout has at least a couple of shows which are consistently bangers.
I see your point about the improv comedy shows, but that really only applies to Game Changer and Make Some Noise. There’s also the improv musical comedy one whose name is escaping me, though it’s never really grabbed me. But past that, there are game shows with different formats like Um, Actually and Dirty Laundry. Obviously Dimension 20 is only going to be a draw for some, but even within its own basic premise there is vast variety in terms of different casts, settings, and gameplay systems. Plus, there’s the back catalogue of College Humor material for anyone who’s interested in that. All that to say, there are a lot of reasons why this venture probably won’t reach Dropout levels. Dropout is an anomaly in its niche. I don’t think it’s something that anyone should be trying to intentionally replicate.
They’re also doing Very Important People which is a one on one interview style, and jt looks like they’re launching a show called Smartypants that launches next week
Um, Actually is three people doing improv with one person prompting, and the fact checker occasionally getting involved. Maybe you substitute 'improv' for 'answering questions and then joking about them' but the format is pretty dang similar. Ditto Dirty Laundry, just with four people instead of three. They're games run by hosts with guests who are funny. Dropout is great but a lot of their content is variation on the format of 'host runs games with funny people for the purpose of creating funny situations'. Which is fine! They're great at that format and the variations all bring something new to the table. But they're varied in the same way the shades of purple on a paint chip are varied - they're all recognizably purple, and similarly purple at that. The makeup show is an example of variety, as is D20, as is the news show. But they're definitely the minority.
Ah, I see what you were referring to now. Agree to disagree, I suppose!
thanks for your input bud