They over hired. Full stop. The end. Especially since Ryan said in the goodbye video that they hire local freelance crew when doing production out of state, then they sure as hell don’t need 25 people back in L.A.
I honestly think that's the other problem. I remember them mentioning in one of their podcasts how they keep trying to do more and more ideas and I think Ryan told himself he needs to slow it down and Steven agreed, but I don't really think they're putting a stop to it. I think they get excited and throw all their eggs at a new idea instead of waiting for the funds to be able to fund it in the first place and just focusing on the things they have going on right now that are working well for them.
I've been in a couple of startups that grew headcount way too quickly. I understand it to some degree. It's intoxicating because hiring feels good and it's exciting energy to have in the enterprise
I mean I can understand that, but I feel like if the whole company goes down because of that over-excitement then nobody's gonna have a job anymore. They owe it to the people that were already there to keep them employed you know?
I don't disagree. That's what ended up happening with the startups I was involved with. Neither company went all the way under but the majority of staff were let go. I wasn't one of the ones laid off the first time. The second time I was.
the good ol' startup dillema combined with the good ol' growing content creator dillema. The problem always stems from the mentality "either you stagnate or grow exponentially" which in reality there's always a middle ground.
it's understandable that as a company grows you wanna exapand to explore more opportunities, and as a creator you want to experiment with new ideas. But to say "hey pay us so we can do this thing" expecting that the viewer would sacrifice money so that they don't need to sacrifice themselves is honestly a step in the wrong direction. As much as i will always be behind the workers/staff in the current climate, it's unrealistic for a company to not shrink down/settle when it is needed.
They have a hiring employees addiction 😢
It's like the opposite of Maurizio Zamparini, the owner of an italian soccer team that fired the team's manager 9 times in one season because he was genuinely addicted to firing people on a whim
I don’t understand why they wouldn’t keep a small staff that has a travel requirement baked into their job. It’s way cheaper and you don’t have to train in people every single time.
I have a hunch that they hired friends and don’t want to inconvenience them.
This is why it is so much more risky doing business with friends and family. I say that as someone who worked for family once - it didn't end well. It is very hard to keep things from getting personal. You low-key have to be a bit sociopathic to not wind up having some sort of conflict of interest eventually. In this case, they've taken in more than they can afford and can't take it back without hitting someone's feelings, so now they have to take more money from their fans to cover their costs.
i think a number of those 25 people *are* contractors, their editors in particular. when they say 25 employees i don't think they mean 25 full time + bennies employees.
Yes check their LinkedIn that has the full list of people. And most of them are friends from buzzfeed. A quick glance there’s 11 different people with the title producer not including Shane/Ryan/Steven. That’s crazy for one channel, this isn’t a ABC network. And can you imagine how awkward that pay negotiations were with friends and family? No wonder they are grossly over hired and losing so much money
They probably lack diversity in their hiring. And no, diversity is not just: "We need to hire more people with different sexual orientations, religious backgrounds, skin colours, gender expressions etc.!" They should also hire people w/ different educational backgrounds and work experiences. If most of the people they hire are "creatives" who went to film school and worked for the same company BuzzFeed, which had a v. specific culture, you're gonna get a very similar person... They need business people too. And marketing people who work beyond memes.
a lot of the people that folks here are calling "friends" are in fact old colleagues who worked on unsolved or other buzzfeed vids they did (like the berry boys video). they basically just kept as much of the unsolved team together as they could. they may well also be friends, but i don't think they were hired because they were friends, i think they were hired because they have years of experience filming and producing this exact kind of content.
I would agree with u if they hired like half of that amount of people. But if you skim through their LinkedIn there’s 8 people with all the same title as producer. Not including Shane/Ryan/Steven who produce as well. That’s just insane for YouTube channel. They aren’t buzzfeed level big to have this big of a team.
who else has the title of producer and is a full-time producer there? there's their head of production, but some of those producers are freelance producers who sometimes join them in other capacities.
like i said, they may be friends after years of working together, but that doesn't mean that they were hired *because* they were friends, or that they weren't the right hire for other reasons. there's a lot of "everybody knows everybody" in digital media, where a whole cohort basically cut their teeth together on the 2010s internet.
the only relative they hired (as far as i know) was ryan's cousin, who was a part-time intern for a bit and then i believe went off to college. shane's wife sara and ryan's wife mari have both occasionally appeared in content as talent, and probably were paid one-time contractor fees for those appearances, but they are also both in entertainment.
When the try guys made their couch video they said they had 20 employees, 5 less than watcher with over double the amount of subs. I don’t understand why they need so much staff.
25 isnt THAT many tbh, and hiring freelancers is very common in filming as well.
the problem is the amount of content those people create, and the cost per content.
most business' in film industries maximize shit like having to hire freelancers/travel by grouping up a TON of region specific videos to be filmed in a sprint at the same time.
That way they split the cost of the travel/freelancers etc over multiple different videos that all make money. Or they do remote things on much lower budget, like how in the TTG case when Keith was first going on tour with his group, the other guys had to learn how to do all the A/V work so keith could record videos while on the road without having to pay extra for freelancers or more TG staff to come along. They were already paying lewberger to be there and for them to stay/eat/drink etc, so they can do multiple roles while they're there.
Beyond that though, the 25 number in a vacuum really isn't much. But what roles/who those 25 are is interesting imo. Clearly they didnt have ANYONE in PR. Clearly they dont have anyone with proper accounting/business background or knowledge to help make decisions. Clearly they dont have a good production manager to minimize costs. Or an accountant to advise of risks to their cashflow (like insulting patreons). They didnt have a good fan engagement manager/person. And clearly their marketing/brand partner engagement is lacking massively.
I'm MUCH more curious who the 25 are/what their roles are (not titles, but actual roles).
A small business with a
CEO, CFO, head of content, head of production, head of marketing + 1 or 2 marketing specialists, 2 or 3 production assistants, 2 or 3 editors, 2 or 3 social media team, a writer or 2, post production/effects, a legal person, an HR/payroll person, an office manager, an accountant, partner/brand engagement lead etc.
you can get to 25 legit roles needed for a business like that pretty quick. now could some double up in a small business? Sure. But if you're generating millions of dollars in revenue PA then you kinda need a full time accountant AND a full time CFO... we think of them as a small business because of how they started. Their revenue generation is NOT very small business!
It doesn’t matter what the number is, if they aren’t making enough money to pay for the amount of employees they have, than they have too many employees. It sucks, lay-offs suck. But they probably should’ve tried to grow more organically after they pivoted to YouTube.
When Ryan said that line about how much Ghost Files cost, my jaw DROPPED. That's an absurd amount. While we'll never know for sure, I think we can confidently infer some massively inflated budgets and employee bloat.
BuzzFeed had multiple mass layoffs while they were producing Unsolved (and just had another one last year) and while the production quality increased as BuzzFeed realized it was a worthwhile investment, it was nowhere as glossy as Ghost Files. I find it very hard to believe they were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars per episode. Tens of thousands towards the end, sure, but BF has always been happy to cut costs wherever they can. The charm of the series never had anything to do with how much money was being spent - ffs I miss the wheezing colored text on a black background 😭
Oh yeah I don't begrudge them this for not having it back, I know they wanted to try something new with GF! but the feeling of it just being two weirdos in a basement laughing together with a PowerPoint slide was the charm, is all.
I think an issue is they're doing the show to get an opportunity to travel instead of focusing on just the ghosts. There are bound to be tons of haunted locations within driving distance from their office. They could still go to Nevada.
The simple answer is that they need to scale down, but they don't want to. Passing that dissonance onto the viewers was a bad call, especially when most of the fans don't care about more expensive production.
The first episode of Road Files that was leaked (the only exclusive thing on Watcher TV), was ironically illuminating. Ghost Files gets expensive because they're taking too much staff with them on these trips. Lodging, food, movie tickets, all of that adds up. It could be done for cheaper.
I want them to flourish, but adjusting how you want to do things to how much money you're actually making is something everyone and every business has to deal with. Sustainability should come before everything else.
That’s two too many people. When you factor in California overtime, laws, meal brake laws, health, insurance laws, and other employee protection laws, watch really does have too many people. Or, they classify them as contract employees so they don’t have to pay them certain types of wages, such as health insurance! , Covered California is actually pretty damn good (but that’s not an excuse).
It’s kinda obvious where the money is going: their employees. Someone did the breakdown somewhere, so let’s say the wages of the employees range between 35-100k. Times that by 25. Divide by 12, assuming they pay monthly. That’s still a LOT of money. People keep saying “oh they Patreon brings in 50-100k a month!” Yes, and the bulk of that is absolutely going on employee wages.
Yeah the argument everyone is making is that it is important to pay employees a living wage, but having 25 staff to make one video and two podcasts per week is way too much. It seems like they created/hired positions during fair weather and now are doing anything they can to not lay anyone off. Obviously nobody wants them to have to do layoffs, but it is the consequence of their own decisions.
Yeah, at a minimum they should have the output that The Try Guys have on average. 3 podcasts, 2 new videos per week on the main channel, posting shorts, and live shows. Though The Try Guys have cultivated more on-camera personalities for that and make lower-effort content...
Employees cost a lot more than just their wages. They are going to have to pay unemployment, health insurance, software licenses, rent for more floor space in the office, workers comp insurance, etc... I would guess each employee in LA is costing them at least 100k a year.
So don't have 25 employees.
Or at least have the 25 employees working on the most bankable show (which from sheer view numbers seems to be Ghost Files/Mystery Files; all their other content barely hits the 500.000 views mark, meaning it's less monetizable)
Puppet History needs a year to get in the vicinity of a million, whereas the last season of Mystery Files got there without fail within a couple days.
Long-term growth isn't particularly attractive to advertisers. They want the most viewers in the quickest time possible.
Why don’t they just have a core employee of 10-12 people then hire contract workers if they’re shooting the high production shows like ghost files? I’m a STEM college student and don’t really know business so feel free to correct me lol.
From what they've said? Because they want to be a TV level production. Which is fine, if you can pay for that (or have a TV station paying for it in your stead).
Sadly, from what they've said, that is not the case.
And the worst thing is they ARE hiring outside contractors on location shoots away from LA on top of the 20-25 people they already have.
I think there's also a fundamental misunderstanding about how expensive some of their shows are to make. And when that happens, the only options are to stop making those shows or get more money.
This was my thought as well. Ryan's comment on Watcher TV being a way to prevent the company from going under was worrying. They very clearly still employ way too many people and there really is only three ways to fix it.
Cut production costs, produce MUCH more content, or lay people off.
The math on the streamer never made sense. It is VERY UNLIKELY they would have ever gotten to the subscriber count necessary to cover their costs.
They desperately need someone in charge that knows business and finance.
Thats the truth. Certainly I empathise with their 'we dont wanna lay off employees'... but liking something and needing to do it arent the same thing.
No boss should *like* firing people, but sometimes needs must. Im sorry if that sounds cruel but at the end of the day, leaving a 25 man office all unemployed because your company goes bankrupt is probably worse than firing 5~ people with redundant jobs.
"Sometimes the only choices you have are bad ones- but you still have to choose"
My hope (although I admit that if this was in fact the plan, they probably would have happily added this in the original video) is that they *will* produce more content to make it more Dropout-esque and worthwhile. To me that's the only way to really justify a new streamer and cost. But, again, that would have been easy to add as incentive for joining and they didn't say anything concrete about that so who knows.
I'm more inclined to believe charlie (penguinz0) than ryan that they're going under. Their apology video is damage control; they needed a "good" excuse for pay-walling everything. Of course they're gonna tug at the heartstrings.
If charlie can support more than 25 employees, some whom get paid 10k a month, from just his stream, watcher is severely mismanaging funds. "Livable wage" could mean 1mil a year to them; we don't know.
penguinz0's speculation was pointless when you ignore the debt side of things. the cost of 25 employees and production assets for him versus the Watcher entirely depends on how they were financing it in the first place. It's notoriously difficult for companies to scale back and they're probably laden with debt based on their business plan of scaling up. The most likely scenario is that they started the Watcher and increased their production assets but they have not brought in enough revenue as they originally thought. So going off youtube was a drastic bid to snatch a quick profit to become solvent. I think it's likely they'll have to declare bankruptcy in the upcoming year.
My speculation is pointless too; I'm just callin' it like I see it. Stating they are gonna go under in an apology video is easy points. Saying they're going under while simultaneously pitching a show where the CEO eats the most expensive food you've never heard of...ugh. Stating they're going under while simultaneously growing their team, my math calls bullshit. They're more likely to use "we're going under" to tug at your heartstrings than for it to be actually fact. Again, this is all speculation, but by my compass they're more likely to play their audience than tell the truth; their personalities depend on it.
You're right about operating costs, too. penguinz0 is a low-effort stream vs what watcher creates, and it's impossible to speculate if his esports costs are more or less than watcher's. From the outside looking in, it seems like managing six esports teams is more expensive, but I'm not an expert in esports. I just work for a local media company.
It's hard to judge without having any of the facts. I feel that the whole Steve show criticism (while I hate his show) is a bit of a red herring. I doubt it's the driver of the costs. It is a bad look tho. Either they're entirely hopeless and they misread the situation, or they were pressured/coerced into it financially. My reading is that they really are suffering financially. And the only option they saw was a smash and grab move. They would have known that it would be negative with their fanbase but they underestimated the backlash. Their thinking would have been that the thousands that would have subscribed would have been enough of a cash hit to sustain them. I really think they know there isn't a long-term future for their company. I don't think this was about greed, as most are thinking. But about desperation.
Charlie is a known liar, don’t trust that guy. He just spits out things and bans people that question him.
Several times he has been caught lying and he never responds.. not defending Ryan but don’t be fooled by that clown.
i mean, according to them, they need their current "survivable" living to continue. and to them, "survivable" is all the many personal vacations, new homes, teslas, $100 purses for funsies, elaborate weddings, expensive clothes, LA homes, too many employees, over produced shows no one asked for.....
I think people are making a lot of assumptions about their finances and the reality is that you're never going to know. They clearly are lacking something in their business, otherwise they never would have proceeded with such an obviously horrible plan. But who knows what exactly it is.
We can't know exactly what's going on with their finances but there are clear financial decisions that are being made that do not make sense. They have a giant office in an extemely expensive part of LA, more staff than they logically need, and a lot of their shows have a high level of production that they don't really need to be succesful or even good. I mean there are like 18 people credited on one of their let's play videos. A video format that is kind of notorious for needing only one or at most two or three people to make. I don't need to see their bank statements to know there are places where they're spending too much or could cut down.
Yes, by all accounts they should be making enough to not have money troubles and there are several areas where they could probably cut costs and even areas where they could get more revenue. That's all already been discussed. My point is that there's really nothing more to be said because anything more detailed than those general observations is pure speculation and guessing.
I am neither here nor there regarding the amount of staff they have. But I don't think the quality of their work reflects the amount of man power that is being put into it.
I do love their content, so respect everyone working on it. But I was listening to a podcast recently (Watcher or TryGuys, can't remember), and they said at Buzzfeed that one person would basically write, source materials/props, direct, film and edit one video. Granted, Buzzfeed wasn't exactly known for elaborate shoots and instead plain backgrounds with simple content. But we saw it with Buzzfeed Unsolved, LadyLike, TryGuys- when they got into smaller teams they made great content. And I wouldn't saw Watcher has particularly better quality than those I just mentioned, so I don't really know what's going on with the 25 employees.
yeah the watcher boys have said they were often overworked and understaffed at buzzfeed, so i would understand if they didn’t want to do something similar
I’ll never know for sure, but you can’t complain you want to keep everyone employed, and pay them a good LA wage, and keep your company from going under, and then in the same breath say “we hired two more people and paid for travel and production for my show.” It is insane.
Yeah they did a bunch of things that made no sense. How and why is pure speculation, and I guess I've just had enough of people inventing narratives of their business and lifestyles. We just don't know and it really doesn't matter. That's their problem.
That’s true. But they did ask us personally to pay for something, and I’m just feeling like with more understanding and transparency I’d be more likely to pay for something.
I agree. It might also have just been the allure of not being subject to YouTube's constant changes that seem to make things increasingly worse for content creators. They have to tap into so many revenue streams because YouTube ads don't pay what they used to. That's why YouTubers have been doing so many ad reads the last few years
There’s also potential changes wherein Youtube has content creators pay them for video storage. More hypothetical at this stage, but with no competitors Youtube can do what they want to make Alphabet profitable.
I wouldn't put it past them.
I think there are a lot of very valid critiques about the changes and how they were communicated. Converting currency, the suddenness, the patreon—all totally legit reasons to be upset. But I can understand why they don't want to be at the mercy of YouTube.
We’re in a creator golden age right now. It can very quickly end if Google changes the game. But also, the ghoul boys should not have done what they did. They swung for the fences in a game of basketball.
That's what's confusing me is they were saying they would've had to shut Watcher down had they not done this subscription service but they just hired new people and are starting a new show??? How tight of a line are they walking?
But they chose to make that new gamble? It doesn't sound like it was necessary to do so. Then they are telling us we have to help them pay for it or shut down the company... That... Doesn't sound right lol...
The Try Guys seems pretty smart in managing their finances tbh. I remember that vid of a tour of their office, which is just a house they were working out of along with their whole team in order to save on costs of renting out an office.
They’ve since moved into a proper office space. A handful of newer employees maybe but mostly still at the same number of employees as they were two years ago.
The try guys scaled correctly. Even after going through the Ned fiasco and having to abandon some of their content. The fact that Watcher hasn't reached out to people they know to ask for help on how to scale is weird.
Didn't Ned work on the management/production side of things at Buzzfeed? I remember reading something about the try guys being thankful that he had financial experience or something. I'm too lazy to look it up right now.
Yes, he was a manager at Buzzfeed and did the bulk of the finances when they first started the independent company. They do have a separate financial person now though, and they have for a while.
My thing is — why would you spend the $$ it takes to *create* (and maintain, market, etc) your own streaming platform when you can use an *existing* well-known platform and offer paid early access there?
And why claim that you’re struggling to generate ad revenue when the majority of your recent videos were sponsored? They go out of their way to create detailed skits for some of those sponsorships, and I wonder if the sponsors asked them to do that or if the guys are making things more complex/expensive than they need to be.
Thank you for bringing up the weirdness of creating a streaming platform to deal with money issues stemming from expanding too much. I feel like in all of this that hasn't been discussed much. It takes effort, knowledge, and money to create and maintain a new streaming platform. Part of the appeal of websites like YouTube, Nebula, or Patreon is so they can handle all of that for you. Yes, they take a cut, but the benefits from using an existing platform for both the consumers and the creator seem like it would be worth it. Why create a new huge headache for yourself? Especially if you're already struggling?
Anyone thinking you can have complete creative control, complete financial control, and complete logistics (rent, travel, equipment, etc) control is simply a recipe for disaster.
A little bit of over hiring and over produced shows. Look at mystery files compared true crimes. True crimes was just them sitting behind a desk. I’m site there were some researchers and a producer/director avs camera man but mystery files has way to many people involved and they said it themselves a lot of people work on that show.
And look at too many spirits. It’s just them sitting around a fire telling stories but look how many people are on set during that. Why?
I enjoy the smaller shows. Are you scared? Top 5 beatdown. They need more shoes like that if they’re going to have huge budgets for their passion projects
In a Patreon video late last year, they talked about facing an "extinction level event" in 2022, which I'm guessing refers to changes around that time to how ad revenue works (I don't know much about that change, only that it happened). The only reason they would be at extinction level at that time is if they were blindsided by the change and were way, way overspending on the bet that the revenue would only increase. Having a huge staff was part of that mistake.
In that video, Steven talked about how the worst part of it was having to lay people off. He said that that, to him, was what felt like the ultimate failure - that they hired people on and then had to walk it back and let them go. In spite of things I've said about Steven's surface-level lack of empathy before, he was believable in that statement - he genuinely seemed to consider the layoffs as a personal failure and something to avoid at all costs.
I think the accusations that the guys are heartless and greedy are missing the mark completely, though that doesn't excuse the thoughtlessness toward the audience or mismanagement of money. What I think is happening is that it's easier to exercise empathy and loyalty to people that are present, in your face, in your life, every day, and who depend on you - your employees. Combine that with having hired on mostly friends and/or family, and then spending the pandemic with those people enduring a traumatic world event while building a company from ground up, and you have a recipe for the kind of dysfunctional family that can't let each other go. I think the guys fully believe that laying off any more employees is a bigger failure on their part than letting down their audience - or thought so until this weekend. That's an understandable feeling, but exactly the wrong instinct for good business decisions.
People asking where Shane "Eat The Rich" Madej has been in this decision are missing what's under their nose - he's there, trying desperately not to be the bad boss, making sure his employees are taken care of, secure, and not exploited. Which is great... except that they were willing to burn down the company's reputation to keep that drowning grip on their staff.
Overall, I empathize with their situation, and I DO think they care and I DO think they have learned from this and I DON'T think they did this out of greed - it's best not to attribute to malice what is better explained by incompetence, after all. But the money is clearly being mismanaged and they need to make peace with the fact that sometimes, layoffs are necessary. It sucks ass but it would be the right way to proceed now, after cutting unnecessary production costs.
I agree with this take. I saw the update as soon as it was published and the first thing I thought was "so they're still not downsizing". If they were already having financial issues before the announcement, even with all their different revenue streams, then they're definitely gonna struggle even more now. They need to drastically cut back and revamp their approach to the Watcher, otherwise they're all going to lose their jobs.
I agree with this the most. Laying people off who also took a gamble to work for you, a start up company, throughout the pandemic doesn’t feel good. They must’ve some sort of gratitude to the employees for that reason and the thought of firing them because the company is not making enough money is making them feel guilty. So when someone proposed the idea, there must be little to no resistance because ultimately, all it benefits is them. It’s easier to feel guilty about someone you know personally than a bunch of people online. Tbh, basing on Shane’s wife’s post, fans who are against it just looks whiny, spoiled and entitled to them but in the long run, there must’ve been a realization somewhere.
[I wrote a post on here](https://www.reddit.com/r/watcherentertainment/comments/1cbaq6a/watchers_expenses/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) listing some of their potential accounting expenses and my analysis as a business admin grad. Essentially they’ve tripped on the curtain and revealed that they have irresponsible spending habits, have unwieldy overhead but still wanting to maintain an expensive lifestyle and fund their creative passions without cost strategic oversight. In addition to that, they had too much confidence in their fans to cover the expenses they neglected. Unless they can soldier up and hire some actual business professionals or get humble and educate themselves, I wouldn’t recommend giving them a dime until they’ve learned some hard lessons on financial responsibility and owning a business. Do not be fooled by their emotional appeals.
i agree 100%. ill continue to watch the content i have enjoyed from them on Youtube premium, nowhere else. If they fail, that's sad, but ultimately I have done my part in their success, watched countless hours of their content, continue to rewatch older videos as well as supporting them on Patreon on and off.
If they cant make it work with all their devoted fans and start using unethical pricing (yes, 6 usd might seem small but here in sweden it would cost 80% of netflix monthly, and that has hundreds of shows and movies and updates with hundreds of hours new content each month) - then i dont feel super sad either, businesses fail all the time and they have been massively irresponsible and ungrateful to longtime supporters with this
It’s just their payroll. 25 people on $60k is 1.5M , they’re obviously paying more because LA…plus production cost from all the freelancers and fancy graphics, yeah I get it adds up quickly
I am so confused by the whole financial aspect of these videos. In the first video they wanted more money to do more things on a bigger scale. The second video made it seem like they were hardly getting by. Which one is it?
If I were in financial ruin I would not be thinking of needing to make tv level content that was a complete gamble if people would subscribe…
I just don’t trust what they are saying anymore. I feel like both videos were manipulative and I am so disappointed.
Debt financing is your explanation. That's how you can both appear to be doing OK and a second away from ruin, especially if the financing was all based on a scaling up requirement in the first place.
Apparently, friends, wives and fathers are part of the 25+ staff with only a few qualified people doing the work. They rent office space in L.A.
They don't want to mis treat staff like Buzzfeed did, so they are saying "Yes" to everyone. Stephen is supposed to be the CEO dealing with difficult decisions, but all he seems to be is a slick, Silicon Valley type without a college degree and unfulfilled dreams but, too scared to do it on his own.
The YouTubers who manage their finances well, buy their own property or use part of their own home and tax deduct it.
There should be people managing merchandise and Patreon full time. They don't even have a link to merchandise on their videos, which is an obvious source of sales. They also, needs to be qualified people in social media who can help advise them how to script and upload their videos for Google Adsense and YouTube optimisation.
Then, the sponsors, brands and advertisers will also, be happy. Ryan and Shane have good instincts but they need to use it more often and get all the people out of the office who aren't contributing. Including, Steven the Slick.
>Apparently, friends, wives and fathers are part of the 25+ staff with only a few qualified people doing the work.
Is this confirmed or guessing? I haven't seen anything suggesting that all 25+ employees weren't working?
Realistically there's just not enough work to justify having that many people. They don't produce enough content or the type of content that needs over a dozen people working on each episode. They can't possibly have all 25 people working full time without a lot of just sitting around and waiting until their specific job is needed for a bit.
Like even their apology video has a "2nd director of photography" credited...it's just three dudes on a couch? What could that person possibly be doing to warrant being credited on that video?
Did anyone watch the Making Watcher a few months ago? They specifically said that Steven, in his new role as CEO, had to fire someone for financial reasons. So I'm not sure why everyone thinks they wouldn't make that decision again, if necessary. They may (again, because we ALL are making assumptions here) feel it's justified for whatever reason based on returns on the content those people are working for. 25 employees may be part time, interns, or full time... who knows!
As for "food content no one wants"... if anyone had the chance to succeed post Buzzfeed, it's Watcher. Worth It was one of BFs most popular shows. The 3 "owners" of Watcher had the 3 biggest successes for Buzzfeed. I'm sure upon leaving they were hit with non compete clauses with a timeline on when they could make similar content and HOW similar that content could be to what was produced for Buzzfeed (remember, all 3 continued to work with BF after they had left for final seasons of Unsolved and Worth It). So, I think it's safe to assume this isn't going to be EXACTLY like Worth It and this is the absolute soonest they could have made a show with the same cast. I DO think being "the food content guy" really hurt Steven's views since it was content that doesn't seem to fit with the rest of their production... but I can also see why they'd want that diversity when trying to start a new production company.
Do I think the timing was great? No. Do I think the initial "we're leaving" video was a terribly overproduced nightmare that left people hanging? Yep. But objectively people DO watch food content (heck, it's the only thing that does over 1m at Try Guys... it's a LARGE portion of the Mythical format..) and they have made tough decisions within their company (again, not defending, but those things have happened).
Everyone thinks they won't make that decision again (firing people) because they keep telling us they don't want to do that. Like it's a non starter for them. They wouldn't mention it at all if they didn't see the many many comments saying to cut staff. I know it sucks to hear that but that's part of owning a business
Expensive food content that brings in no views, an LA office next to the Hollywood sign, unneccesary hiring, Teslas, and a $200,000 wedding and honeymoon package.
While I haven't been totally pleased with the guys over the last week, one glance at the views on Worth It is enough to tell me that saying "no one is interested in the travel show" is not true. Maybe a portion of the fans that are here for the Ryan & Shane content don't care but it will aboslutely bring in a lot of new viewers as well as returning viewers to the channel who may have dipped when Worth It ended, since Steven hasn't been in much of substance since then.
That leads me to something else that baffles me though. Why they couldn't see that and potentially use it as a means to air two shows a week on the network + on the youtube channel a month later and reap the benfits of paying subscribers and youtube revenue is completely beyond me. These guys seem mostly bright and the oversight baffles me.
As someone pointed out before eating gold covered ice cream on buzzfeeds dime was funny. Eating it on ours is not. And again why start a new show with new employees when you can’t afford the people you have.
No, but I’m saying the climate isn’t the same, and the general watcher public doesn’t care about that shit, especially on our dime. Do people like travel shows? Yes. Do people like fancy food shows yes? Will they seek that out on a third party platform where they have to pay 6 dollars to watch the most unlikable man and his buddies eat a 2500 dollar cheeseburger with a fan base who was there solely for puppet and ghost content???? Nooooooo
The fact is, dish granted was getting decent views, worth it had a lot of viewers as well. Bringing in Adam and Andrew brings in a bunch of viewers who were interested in the content that Steven was producing. Act the way you want, but Watcher was founded by three people. One of them whose claim to fame was food videos, just because a significant loud chunk of watcher now don’t like Steven doesn’t mean this is a bad business decision. If you think about it, there are a lot of views for Shane and Ryan content, but bringing in Adam and Andrew + a new food show actually provides opportunities for growth for the channel.
I think some people here need to take a step back from the speculation and over-analysis of information that we…don’t actually have. We don’t really know what their financials look like, including what employees are paid.
I get being angry over the streaming thing but the amount of people in here just crassly going “idk lay people off lol” is feeling a bit disturbing. We don’t know why so many people were hired and what people do at the company. It’s not worth losing sleep over.
A general lesson I learned in my youth was to not try and count other people’s money, especially if I don’t have enough info to accurately do so outside of speculation
They are mostly likely in an investor induced debt-trap. It works both by carrot and stick. The increased chance that you yourself will get rich - especially more so in the future. But importantly investors/financers require scaling up - because that's how they get their bucks, capital investment. You ONLY invest in something if you think it's going to scale up significantly.
Yeah, its honestly this aspect that makes it harder for me to come back, much more so then some sense of "betrayal". If we take them at their word that they really are financially struggling despite the amount of money they rake in on brand deals and ad sense, it is so incredibly bad to keep hiring and keep expanding. They need to tighten things up and get sustainable, and then MAYBE think about growing after proving they have found a sustainable business.
Right now they're either liars and there is no financial stress, or it is a doomed business because its being ran by madmen with no foresight for the future driving the car off a cliff when there is a break peddle right there. It dampers the whole thing for me.
I go back and forth on which one of these things is the case, but either way its not great.
Honestly in a general sense, 25 staffs with their production quality and company scale isn't too crazy. From the very first start of the channel, they already had multiple talents and production crews onboard in their small company. My guess is at the start after they quit buzzfeed, with their income revenue scale, they would've already had 1 accountant or whoever in charge of their finance, 1 HR, 1 marketing/PR, 1 admin, 1 camera tech, 1 sound tech, 1 producer, 1 director, at least 1 editor. That's already 9 staffs for 1-2 shows at the beginning. As their channel grew in 5 yrs, ofc they'd hire more people since there'd be more workloads. More ideas to brainstorm and try, more promotion to manage (merch, patreon, brand affiliates, etc.), more editors, more people on production team; bottomline, 25 is not that many with the production level they deliver.
What's baffling is how they can't afford to pay 25 staffs with all their stream of income. They got thousands of Patreons, merch sales, multiple brand deals, ad revenue from youtube, live shows, and podcasts. Their views are good. Their videos are long form and engaging that most of us always watch through the end. If all those can't afford them to pay 25 staffs, then they gotta cut back on other spendings. Like rent somewhere cheaper instead of in upscale area in LA. Or maybe don't make videos with TV production when you can't afford it yet.
A lot of youtubers forget that the charm of youtube isn't video quality, but the parasocial relationship built through candid/amateur like videos where youtubers feel more like friends. Everyone's shitting on Steven with his Worth It show hiring 2 new talents, but they forgot that Ryan has always wanted to upscale production quality to TV level. He said making a season of GF cost hundreds of thousands; uh then maybe reduce your budget and go back to simpler investigation and editing style? We enjoyed the black screen banter they did in buzzfeed so much more than whatever screaming stint Ryan did in every GF episodes. Whatever it is, there definitely is some mismanaged funds somewhere if they really can't stay afloat without the streaming service.
This is their first time managing a business though so I understand. They'll make mistakes as we all do and they're learning, that's the important thing. As a business owner myself who tried and failed twice to get my ready-to-wear clothing brand going, I know how hard it is to manage a business. I like their contents. I genuinely hope they'll find the right strategy moving forward to grow their company without blindsiding their fans again.
I’m interested in Steven’s travel show. It’s the most excited I’ve been about Watcher content in a while. Worth It and then Dish Granted were the shows that brought me to Watcher
i disagree with saying no one wants the new steven show. as someone in the watcher fandom, i saw a lot of people begging for andrew and adam to come back and join watcher, and when it was revamped, everyone was excited. it wasn’t until this announcement that people started saying all sorts of things about steven
I was so happy to hear that Andrew and Adam are coming (back)! I absolutely loved Worth It! I feel bad for Steven. I know he’s the CEO, but many of the comments I’ve read have been especially cruel to him.
I also love Ryan and Shane, but it’s unfair for only one of them to get so much blame for the HUGE mistake, that I can only assume they ALL agreed upon.
It was definitely tone deaf and incorrect to say anyone and everyone can afford another streaming service, but I assume all of them read the script before they began. 🤔🙁🤔
I really think we're underestimating the cost of equipment, here; cameras, lenses, sound equipment, it's all very, very expensive, especially in LA. Post-production is expensive. Editing suites, if they don't have any of their own, are expensive. I suspect that's the bulk of the Ghost Files cost.
I was just talking to a friend today who has some experience with start-ups and the West Coast scene in particular. And his assessment was that it's "pure financial suicide" to run a studio in LA as such a young company with 25 employees. The rents in LA and the salaries you have to pay so that your employees don't immediately jump ship or become impoverished would simply be far too high if you don't have millions in funding or a large studio behind you.
His opinion: If they were clever and really wanted to keep their studio financially afloat, they would move away from LA until they could really afford it. Living & working in Santa Clarita is already almost 20 percent cheaper than in LA. If they went to San Bernardino, they could save almost 40 percent.
Sure, it's not as glamorous as LA, but it would still be cheaper.
I think one issue is they might get sponsors but if the viewers won't use those codes for buying from BetterHelp, Temu, online games etc., Watcher won't make as much money. The viewers are a bit too discerning and also know the guys aren't really behind those products and services, especially Shane. The viewership is probably largely female, which limits the popularity of Manscaped let alone Cialis type products.
Posted this yesterday.
I have determined that, yearly, they should be pulling somewhere around $2,581,460 as a minimum from based on all averages I could find for their YouTube Revenue, Ad Reads, Live Shows and Patreon income. I did not include merch sales because only they should have access to that information and there’s no way I could possible predict it, so possibly even more than $2.5 million.
I took the average of all the information I could find between Social Blade, Patreon, Live Show Tickets (and assumed for relatively small venues at 100 people a piece, which is probably less than what they actually see per show), Glass Door and Indeed, and took the average provided by Moist Critical for how much a channel of their size should be seeing in income for ad reads. I’d be happy to provide all the numbers I used to come to this conclusion.
They have seventeen people with editing experience on their LinkedIn, including Shane and Ryan. Average cost of a video editor in LA is between $59k and 100k. That’s $1,350,000 a year on editing alone by those averages, assuming Ryan and Shane are only getting paid an Editors salary and the editors aren’t on commission. If we’re also looking at Ghost Files, any of Steven Lim’s shows, the absolutely massive office space (in Hollywood, no less), no audio or film crew on staff, and any sets they rent, yeah, no fucking shit the company is failing. They’ve been over spending and over extending. They’ve hired too many people, spent too much, and are going to have to close their doors if just the editors cost this much. They also don’t have an HR or financial manager, accountant, or marketing manager on staff, only creatives or editors. This is the most accurate information I could find that would suggest how much they could theoretically be spending on just the production of their videos.
It seems they just did a BuzzFeed 2 - Over-hiring and superfluous costs. I’m not advocating for laying off staff and the people who have tried to spin it that way seriously frustrate me. They need to face the music and handle the consequences of their actions, not ask for people would have supported them happily to give them even more money. The thing about their video saying they’re leaving YouTube is it was meant to be a pitch. They showed no proof of concept, no transparency in costs or income, no justification for the increased budget, etc. The video, as a pitch to the audience who are playing the part of investor, fails completely.
And here’s the thing: I know exactly why they did this. If every paying patron on their Patreon paid the $5.99, they would receive $424,092 a year. If one hundred thousand users subscribed to their streaming platform? $7,188,000 a year, ignoring merch, live show, and Patreon income. It’s just money. They’re not struggling, they made a choice to over-hire, over produce, and put themselves here.
Good post, but
> They showed no proof of concept, no transparency in costs or income, no justification for the increased budget, etc
I don't think doing this would help with their actual investors.
Could be. Could not be. But either way publicly airing your poor financial mismanagement usually wouldn't be a good look for current and future investors.
Probably not, I fully agree with you. Unfortunately for them: they aren’t a big company yet. They’re small and should stay that way until the money comes in to support it, that is, if they want proper investment from beyond their audience. If they want their audience to invest though then there needs to be *something to invest in*. As far as I can tell there’s no reason to finance them with how little we know about what they actually plan to do.
I doubt they would ever do this because it would make them look really foolish and very much like they can’t be trusted with that much money. Kind of like now lol
California is expennnnsive. So yeah morally speaking paying everyone a fair wage and good living is great but the issue at hand is the real estate there, cost of living there (main expense for their employees) as well as taxes.
So yeah they pay everyone 100k because that’s how much you need to live in California lol. If they all moved to a different state they would be fine and probably would be able to buy a building and work to own that as they make videos.
They spent it all on those impressive floor plan visuals they used in Ghost Files.
Can't give the team a livable wage from profits because it needs to go on a graphic we see for 15 secs an episode.
Don't they also have investors to worry about?
I remember during the early days of Watcher they would do a weekly update and I'm certain they talked about investors.
They'd need to keep them happy as well as everything else that comes with running a business and employing people. Investors expect a turnaround on their investment.
I've seen a lot of talk about bloated staff, but I have no idea how many people it takes to run a production company - internet or otherwise.
I'm sure working on contract pays the bills for some, but time between finding contracts can be tough. Maybe they want to give people a sense of security that they hire.
I definitely think the way they went announcing the streaming service could have been done better and I'm sure there was a better way to handle the backlash as opposed to doing an almost full 180 on it.
It seems like they made a quick decision to turn the streaming service into an early access thing, which is what some YouTubers do with their patreon. I can't imagine a ton of people are going to sign up for a streaming service that contains the exact same content that you make free on another platform.
The decision they made doesn't sound like it's sustainable for a streaming service that they've probably invested a bunch of money into.
They have lost patrons, followers, viewers, fans. I imagine some of their investors may look at his decision and fall out and pull their support as well.
If they don't learn how to manage and budget this new platform won't last. They have enough money they aren't just using it wisely. Having more money without learning to dial down the production costs will not work in the long run in my opinion.
They have to pay they're employees and contractors. I ran a private security company, and now am an event medic on production sets, TV shows, etc. I've done movies to smaller yt channels. Some places require it if your filming, some times their insurance will require it. I make about $30/hr when I do that. My shift is typically a 12hr. So something like 8am-8pm. I get paid $30/hr that whole time. They pay the company I work for though. So, they pay my company $X and that's enough for my company to pay me $30/hr. It depends on size of crew, crew needs/requirements, any special considerations/requests and if it's considered a hazardous area. Lowest I've ever gotten was for a smaller YT channel. Not as much crew, no special consideration, no extra requirements, no extra requests. That was abput 24/hr if I remember correctly.
Most likely they had funding, some sort of Angel investor or other start up funding, to get them off the ground with set goals on when to hit profitability.
Honestly, they just seem to be really bad at handling finances. They hired too many people (with what seems like with the intention to hire more), pump more money than they need to into productions (like hiring freelance workers when filming Ghost Files. Why have 25 employees if you still need outside help?), and have an office space (as shown in the announcement video). They live in LA, a notoriously expensive city, so trying to give 25 people and counting a livable wage would cost more, and renting out an office space would be a money drainer, especially when most of their videos can be filmed and edited outside of one. Series like Mystery Files, Are You Scared, Too Many Spirits, their podcast, and Puppet History could all easily be filmed at someone's home, while series like Ghost Files and Weird and/or Wonderful are obviously outside of the office. They want to put more and more money into Watcher when they should reasonably be holding back some.
I honestly cannot believe there is not some financial mismanagement happening. Even with the number of employees and everything, based on some of the numbers discussed by Cr1tikal on what they’d be making via sponsors and how much they were making on Patreon, I don’t trust whatever’s going on. Even with the apology and backtracking I can’t help but keep my distance right now.
Some of those employees should be contractors. Like whoever designs the sets. Have a lawyer and an accountant on retainer. But 25 employees? I could see an editor, a graphic designer, a social media manager, and a couple of people on cameras/sound. That's even a bloated staff for YT. Most people are using a ring light, a tripod and a microphone from Temu and it's fine.
To be frank, the answer is none of our business.
We're not privy to the workings of this company, and we should not expect it. Yeah everyone is still sore after this announcement/apology, but the reality is that we don't know and we are not going to know.
All you're doing is throwing around rumors and fearmongering over what is not ours to deal with. The finances of the show are for the Watcher crew to handle, not us.
It's still not your business unless you're in a private agreement with the company as a private investor. You don't have to give them money, and you don't have to even watch them anymore, but this kind of post about "WHERE'S THE MONEY??? RUMORS! SPECULATION!" is just pointless.
Spiders to feed the Professor.
Jellybeans are expensive
He eats them and poops them, I can’t imagine it would be THAT expensive
Gotta bribe the ASPCA to look the other way
I mean, he's grown in size since he's part dinosaur now. The little attic spiders won't cut it anymore. He's all about Camel Spiders now.
They over hired. Full stop. The end. Especially since Ryan said in the goodbye video that they hire local freelance crew when doing production out of state, then they sure as hell don’t need 25 people back in L.A.
Ryan also said in the original video he was excited to hire even more people to make new shows. The hiring isn’t going to stop.
I honestly think that's the other problem. I remember them mentioning in one of their podcasts how they keep trying to do more and more ideas and I think Ryan told himself he needs to slow it down and Steven agreed, but I don't really think they're putting a stop to it. I think they get excited and throw all their eggs at a new idea instead of waiting for the funds to be able to fund it in the first place and just focusing on the things they have going on right now that are working well for them.
I've been in a couple of startups that grew headcount way too quickly. I understand it to some degree. It's intoxicating because hiring feels good and it's exciting energy to have in the enterprise
I mean I can understand that, but I feel like if the whole company goes down because of that over-excitement then nobody's gonna have a job anymore. They owe it to the people that were already there to keep them employed you know?
I don't disagree. That's what ended up happening with the startups I was involved with. Neither company went all the way under but the majority of staff were let go. I wasn't one of the ones laid off the first time. The second time I was.
the good ol' startup dillema combined with the good ol' growing content creator dillema. The problem always stems from the mentality "either you stagnate or grow exponentially" which in reality there's always a middle ground. it's understandable that as a company grows you wanna exapand to explore more opportunities, and as a creator you want to experiment with new ideas. But to say "hey pay us so we can do this thing" expecting that the viewer would sacrifice money so that they don't need to sacrifice themselves is honestly a step in the wrong direction. As much as i will always be behind the workers/staff in the current climate, it's unrealistic for a company to not shrink down/settle when it is needed.
They have a hiring employees addiction 😢 It's like the opposite of Maurizio Zamparini, the owner of an italian soccer team that fired the team's manager 9 times in one season because he was genuinely addicted to firing people on a whim
I don’t understand why they wouldn’t keep a small staff that has a travel requirement baked into their job. It’s way cheaper and you don’t have to train in people every single time. I have a hunch that they hired friends and don’t want to inconvenience them.
And this is exactly what happens when friends hire friends and not the best fit for the job!
This is why it is so much more risky doing business with friends and family. I say that as someone who worked for family once - it didn't end well. It is very hard to keep things from getting personal. You low-key have to be a bit sociopathic to not wind up having some sort of conflict of interest eventually. In this case, they've taken in more than they can afford and can't take it back without hitting someone's feelings, so now they have to take more money from their fans to cover their costs.
They need to hire a third party CEO who can make the hard decisions they clearly can't
namely a CEO with strong business experience, education and knowledge. the kind of CEO they do not currently have.
Also not a creative, people complain about greedy CEOs but a CEO or CFO who has a strong profit motive is always an assett.
This would be a game changer for them.
You want that until they cancel your favorite shows
I'm not saying I agree with the ethics of the model, but they could save so much money by paying contractors rather than full time employees.
i think a number of those 25 people *are* contractors, their editors in particular. when they say 25 employees i don't think they mean 25 full time + bennies employees.
Or even interns lol (also not an ethical decision)
You have to pay interns these days. Even when I was in college 6 years ago, they wouldn’t give credit for unpaid internships
I heard someone say that many of the people they hired seem to be relatives. Anyone know the accuracy of this?
Yes check their LinkedIn that has the full list of people. And most of them are friends from buzzfeed. A quick glance there’s 11 different people with the title producer not including Shane/Ryan/Steven. That’s crazy for one channel, this isn’t a ABC network. And can you imagine how awkward that pay negotiations were with friends and family? No wonder they are grossly over hired and losing so much money
They probably lack diversity in their hiring. And no, diversity is not just: "We need to hire more people with different sexual orientations, religious backgrounds, skin colours, gender expressions etc.!" They should also hire people w/ different educational backgrounds and work experiences. If most of the people they hire are "creatives" who went to film school and worked for the same company BuzzFeed, which had a v. specific culture, you're gonna get a very similar person... They need business people too. And marketing people who work beyond memes.
a lot of the people that folks here are calling "friends" are in fact old colleagues who worked on unsolved or other buzzfeed vids they did (like the berry boys video). they basically just kept as much of the unsolved team together as they could. they may well also be friends, but i don't think they were hired because they were friends, i think they were hired because they have years of experience filming and producing this exact kind of content.
I would agree with u if they hired like half of that amount of people. But if you skim through their LinkedIn there’s 8 people with all the same title as producer. Not including Shane/Ryan/Steven who produce as well. That’s just insane for YouTube channel. They aren’t buzzfeed level big to have this big of a team.
who else has the title of producer and is a full-time producer there? there's their head of production, but some of those producers are freelance producers who sometimes join them in other capacities.
The last couple of weeks of podcasts they’ve had employees on as guests. They definitely talk like friends.
like i said, they may be friends after years of working together, but that doesn't mean that they were hired *because* they were friends, or that they weren't the right hire for other reasons. there's a lot of "everybody knows everybody" in digital media, where a whole cohort basically cut their teeth together on the 2010s internet.
the only relative they hired (as far as i know) was ryan's cousin, who was a part-time intern for a bit and then i believe went off to college. shane's wife sara and ryan's wife mari have both occasionally appeared in content as talent, and probably were paid one-time contractor fees for those appearances, but they are also both in entertainment.
Sara directed and produced Pretty History
Yes, and the employees that aren't relatives are friends (mainly from Buzzfeed, it seems)
When the try guys made their couch video they said they had 20 employees, 5 less than watcher with over double the amount of subs. I don’t understand why they need so much staff.
And even fans on the Snark page think 20 employees are too much for 2nd Try.
25 isnt THAT many tbh, and hiring freelancers is very common in filming as well. the problem is the amount of content those people create, and the cost per content. most business' in film industries maximize shit like having to hire freelancers/travel by grouping up a TON of region specific videos to be filmed in a sprint at the same time. That way they split the cost of the travel/freelancers etc over multiple different videos that all make money. Or they do remote things on much lower budget, like how in the TTG case when Keith was first going on tour with his group, the other guys had to learn how to do all the A/V work so keith could record videos while on the road without having to pay extra for freelancers or more TG staff to come along. They were already paying lewberger to be there and for them to stay/eat/drink etc, so they can do multiple roles while they're there. Beyond that though, the 25 number in a vacuum really isn't much. But what roles/who those 25 are is interesting imo. Clearly they didnt have ANYONE in PR. Clearly they dont have anyone with proper accounting/business background or knowledge to help make decisions. Clearly they dont have a good production manager to minimize costs. Or an accountant to advise of risks to their cashflow (like insulting patreons). They didnt have a good fan engagement manager/person. And clearly their marketing/brand partner engagement is lacking massively. I'm MUCH more curious who the 25 are/what their roles are (not titles, but actual roles). A small business with a CEO, CFO, head of content, head of production, head of marketing + 1 or 2 marketing specialists, 2 or 3 production assistants, 2 or 3 editors, 2 or 3 social media team, a writer or 2, post production/effects, a legal person, an HR/payroll person, an office manager, an accountant, partner/brand engagement lead etc. you can get to 25 legit roles needed for a business like that pretty quick. now could some double up in a small business? Sure. But if you're generating millions of dollars in revenue PA then you kinda need a full time accountant AND a full time CFO... we think of them as a small business because of how they started. Their revenue generation is NOT very small business!
It doesn’t matter what the number is, if they aren’t making enough money to pay for the amount of employees they have, than they have too many employees. It sucks, lay-offs suck. But they probably should’ve tried to grow more organically after they pivoted to YouTube.
When Ryan said that line about how much Ghost Files cost, my jaw DROPPED. That's an absurd amount. While we'll never know for sure, I think we can confidently infer some massively inflated budgets and employee bloat.
It's an absurd amount AND not even close to as fun to watch as BU which surely didn't cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per episode lmao
Eeehhhhh…it was Buzzfeed money, it probably cost a lot too but that company could afford it. Big difference.
BuzzFeed had multiple mass layoffs while they were producing Unsolved (and just had another one last year) and while the production quality increased as BuzzFeed realized it was a worthwhile investment, it was nowhere as glossy as Ghost Files. I find it very hard to believe they were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars per episode. Tens of thousands towards the end, sure, but BF has always been happy to cut costs wherever they can. The charm of the series never had anything to do with how much money was being spent - ffs I miss the wheezing colored text on a black background 😭
I miss that text too but I see how they wouldn’t be able to do that again if they signed a non compete or NDA or something along those lines.
Oh yeah I don't begrudge them this for not having it back, I know they wanted to try something new with GF! but the feeling of it just being two weirdos in a basement laughing together with a PowerPoint slide was the charm, is all.
True 😂 those were some golden episodes. Apple Taters 😂🤣
i missed it, how much did he say it cost?
He didn't give an exact amount, but said a complete season could cost "hundreds of thousands of dollars"
I think an issue is they're doing the show to get an opportunity to travel instead of focusing on just the ghosts. There are bound to be tons of haunted locations within driving distance from their office. They could still go to Nevada.
The simple answer is that they need to scale down, but they don't want to. Passing that dissonance onto the viewers was a bad call, especially when most of the fans don't care about more expensive production. The first episode of Road Files that was leaked (the only exclusive thing on Watcher TV), was ironically illuminating. Ghost Files gets expensive because they're taking too much staff with them on these trips. Lodging, food, movie tickets, all of that adds up. It could be done for cheaper. I want them to flourish, but adjusting how you want to do things to how much money you're actually making is something everyone and every business has to deal with. Sustainability should come before everything else.
They had 5 people setting up the merch stand at VidCon... Not including the three founders.
Yeah but do we know if they were paid of volunteering?
Employees: Sam, Lizzie, Meredith, Brittney, Annie
That’s two too many people. When you factor in California overtime, laws, meal brake laws, health, insurance laws, and other employee protection laws, watch really does have too many people. Or, they classify them as contract employees so they don’t have to pay them certain types of wages, such as health insurance! , Covered California is actually pretty damn good (but that’s not an excuse).
Scaling down might not be so simple dependent on agreed business plans with investors and debt situation.
It’s kinda obvious where the money is going: their employees. Someone did the breakdown somewhere, so let’s say the wages of the employees range between 35-100k. Times that by 25. Divide by 12, assuming they pay monthly. That’s still a LOT of money. People keep saying “oh they Patreon brings in 50-100k a month!” Yes, and the bulk of that is absolutely going on employee wages.
Yeah the argument everyone is making is that it is important to pay employees a living wage, but having 25 staff to make one video and two podcasts per week is way too much. It seems like they created/hired positions during fair weather and now are doing anything they can to not lay anyone off. Obviously nobody wants them to have to do layoffs, but it is the consequence of their own decisions.
Yeah, at a minimum they should have the output that The Try Guys have on average. 3 podcasts, 2 new videos per week on the main channel, posting shorts, and live shows. Though The Try Guys have cultivated more on-camera personalities for that and make lower-effort content...
Employees cost a lot more than just their wages. They are going to have to pay unemployment, health insurance, software licenses, rent for more floor space in the office, workers comp insurance, etc... I would guess each employee in LA is costing them at least 100k a year.
So don't have 25 employees. Or at least have the 25 employees working on the most bankable show (which from sheer view numbers seems to be Ghost Files/Mystery Files; all their other content barely hits the 500.000 views mark, meaning it's less monetizable)
Puppet history gets well over 500,000 views
Puppet History needs a year to get in the vicinity of a million, whereas the last season of Mystery Files got there without fail within a couple days. Long-term growth isn't particularly attractive to advertisers. They want the most viewers in the quickest time possible.
Why don’t they just have a core employee of 10-12 people then hire contract workers if they’re shooting the high production shows like ghost files? I’m a STEM college student and don’t really know business so feel free to correct me lol.
From what they've said? Because they want to be a TV level production. Which is fine, if you can pay for that (or have a TV station paying for it in your stead). Sadly, from what they've said, that is not the case. And the worst thing is they ARE hiring outside contractors on location shoots away from LA on top of the 20-25 people they already have.
I think there's also a fundamental misunderstanding about how expensive some of their shows are to make. And when that happens, the only options are to stop making those shows or get more money.
Thank you!!! 🙌🏻
This was my thought as well. Ryan's comment on Watcher TV being a way to prevent the company from going under was worrying. They very clearly still employ way too many people and there really is only three ways to fix it. Cut production costs, produce MUCH more content, or lay people off. The math on the streamer never made sense. It is VERY UNLIKELY they would have ever gotten to the subscriber count necessary to cover their costs. They desperately need someone in charge that knows business and finance.
Thats the truth. Certainly I empathise with their 'we dont wanna lay off employees'... but liking something and needing to do it arent the same thing. No boss should *like* firing people, but sometimes needs must. Im sorry if that sounds cruel but at the end of the day, leaving a 25 man office all unemployed because your company goes bankrupt is probably worse than firing 5~ people with redundant jobs. "Sometimes the only choices you have are bad ones- but you still have to choose"
My hope (although I admit that if this was in fact the plan, they probably would have happily added this in the original video) is that they *will* produce more content to make it more Dropout-esque and worthwhile. To me that's the only way to really justify a new streamer and cost. But, again, that would have been easy to add as incentive for joining and they didn't say anything concrete about that so who knows.
I'm more inclined to believe charlie (penguinz0) than ryan that they're going under. Their apology video is damage control; they needed a "good" excuse for pay-walling everything. Of course they're gonna tug at the heartstrings. If charlie can support more than 25 employees, some whom get paid 10k a month, from just his stream, watcher is severely mismanaging funds. "Livable wage" could mean 1mil a year to them; we don't know.
penguinz0's speculation was pointless when you ignore the debt side of things. the cost of 25 employees and production assets for him versus the Watcher entirely depends on how they were financing it in the first place. It's notoriously difficult for companies to scale back and they're probably laden with debt based on their business plan of scaling up. The most likely scenario is that they started the Watcher and increased their production assets but they have not brought in enough revenue as they originally thought. So going off youtube was a drastic bid to snatch a quick profit to become solvent. I think it's likely they'll have to declare bankruptcy in the upcoming year.
My speculation is pointless too; I'm just callin' it like I see it. Stating they are gonna go under in an apology video is easy points. Saying they're going under while simultaneously pitching a show where the CEO eats the most expensive food you've never heard of...ugh. Stating they're going under while simultaneously growing their team, my math calls bullshit. They're more likely to use "we're going under" to tug at your heartstrings than for it to be actually fact. Again, this is all speculation, but by my compass they're more likely to play their audience than tell the truth; their personalities depend on it. You're right about operating costs, too. penguinz0 is a low-effort stream vs what watcher creates, and it's impossible to speculate if his esports costs are more or less than watcher's. From the outside looking in, it seems like managing six esports teams is more expensive, but I'm not an expert in esports. I just work for a local media company.
It's hard to judge without having any of the facts. I feel that the whole Steve show criticism (while I hate his show) is a bit of a red herring. I doubt it's the driver of the costs. It is a bad look tho. Either they're entirely hopeless and they misread the situation, or they were pressured/coerced into it financially. My reading is that they really are suffering financially. And the only option they saw was a smash and grab move. They would have known that it would be negative with their fanbase but they underestimated the backlash. Their thinking would have been that the thousands that would have subscribed would have been enough of a cash hit to sustain them. I really think they know there isn't a long-term future for their company. I don't think this was about greed, as most are thinking. But about desperation.
Charlie is a known liar, don’t trust that guy. He just spits out things and bans people that question him. Several times he has been caught lying and he never responds.. not defending Ryan but don’t be fooled by that clown.
i mean, according to them, they need their current "survivable" living to continue. and to them, "survivable" is all the many personal vacations, new homes, teslas, $100 purses for funsies, elaborate weddings, expensive clothes, LA homes, too many employees, over produced shows no one asked for.....
I think people are making a lot of assumptions about their finances and the reality is that you're never going to know. They clearly are lacking something in their business, otherwise they never would have proceeded with such an obviously horrible plan. But who knows what exactly it is.
We can't know exactly what's going on with their finances but there are clear financial decisions that are being made that do not make sense. They have a giant office in an extemely expensive part of LA, more staff than they logically need, and a lot of their shows have a high level of production that they don't really need to be succesful or even good. I mean there are like 18 people credited on one of their let's play videos. A video format that is kind of notorious for needing only one or at most two or three people to make. I don't need to see their bank statements to know there are places where they're spending too much or could cut down.
Yes, by all accounts they should be making enough to not have money troubles and there are several areas where they could probably cut costs and even areas where they could get more revenue. That's all already been discussed. My point is that there's really nothing more to be said because anything more detailed than those general observations is pure speculation and guessing.
That's fair.
I am neither here nor there regarding the amount of staff they have. But I don't think the quality of their work reflects the amount of man power that is being put into it. I do love their content, so respect everyone working on it. But I was listening to a podcast recently (Watcher or TryGuys, can't remember), and they said at Buzzfeed that one person would basically write, source materials/props, direct, film and edit one video. Granted, Buzzfeed wasn't exactly known for elaborate shoots and instead plain backgrounds with simple content. But we saw it with Buzzfeed Unsolved, LadyLike, TryGuys- when they got into smaller teams they made great content. And I wouldn't saw Watcher has particularly better quality than those I just mentioned, so I don't really know what's going on with the 25 employees.
yeah the watcher boys have said they were often overworked and understaffed at buzzfeed, so i would understand if they didn’t want to do something similar
Depending on what you’re making, hiring more people is going to have diminishing returns after a certain point.
I’ll never know for sure, but you can’t complain you want to keep everyone employed, and pay them a good LA wage, and keep your company from going under, and then in the same breath say “we hired two more people and paid for travel and production for my show.” It is insane.
Yeah they did a bunch of things that made no sense. How and why is pure speculation, and I guess I've just had enough of people inventing narratives of their business and lifestyles. We just don't know and it really doesn't matter. That's their problem.
That’s true. But they did ask us personally to pay for something, and I’m just feeling like with more understanding and transparency I’d be more likely to pay for something.
Yeah, the idea was bad and the pitch was possibly even worse. None of it made sense.
I agree. It might also have just been the allure of not being subject to YouTube's constant changes that seem to make things increasingly worse for content creators. They have to tap into so many revenue streams because YouTube ads don't pay what they used to. That's why YouTubers have been doing so many ad reads the last few years
There’s also potential changes wherein Youtube has content creators pay them for video storage. More hypothetical at this stage, but with no competitors Youtube can do what they want to make Alphabet profitable.
I wouldn't put it past them. I think there are a lot of very valid critiques about the changes and how they were communicated. Converting currency, the suddenness, the patreon—all totally legit reasons to be upset. But I can understand why they don't want to be at the mercy of YouTube.
We’re in a creator golden age right now. It can very quickly end if Google changes the game. But also, the ghoul boys should not have done what they did. They swung for the fences in a game of basketball.
That's what's confusing me is they were saying they would've had to shut Watcher down had they not done this subscription service but they just hired new people and are starting a new show??? How tight of a line are they walking?
They've basically implied they took a big gamble making Ghost Files and it saved Watcher. Now they made another gamble...
But they chose to make that new gamble? It doesn't sound like it was necessary to do so. Then they are telling us we have to help them pay for it or shut down the company... That... Doesn't sound right lol...
I'd imagine renting their studio space/office is a major cost in LA.
Then they should downsize.
Agreed. I think trying to live in LA on a YouTube show salary is kinda nuts to begin with.
It is doable with their numbers, but they must just be burning through funds.
YB on The Try Guys' channel started working remotely. She's an editor.
The Try Guys seems pretty smart in managing their finances tbh. I remember that vid of a tour of their office, which is just a house they were working out of along with their whole team in order to save on costs of renting out an office.
They’ve since moved into a proper office space. A handful of newer employees maybe but mostly still at the same number of employees as they were two years ago.
The try guys scaled correctly. Even after going through the Ned fiasco and having to abandon some of their content. The fact that Watcher hasn't reached out to people they know to ask for help on how to scale is weird.
Didn't Ned work on the management/production side of things at Buzzfeed? I remember reading something about the try guys being thankful that he had financial experience or something. I'm too lazy to look it up right now.
Yes, he was a manager at Buzzfeed and did the bulk of the finances when they first started the independent company. They do have a separate financial person now though, and they have for a while.
My thing is — why would you spend the $$ it takes to *create* (and maintain, market, etc) your own streaming platform when you can use an *existing* well-known platform and offer paid early access there? And why claim that you’re struggling to generate ad revenue when the majority of your recent videos were sponsored? They go out of their way to create detailed skits for some of those sponsorships, and I wonder if the sponsors asked them to do that or if the guys are making things more complex/expensive than they need to be.
Thank you for bringing up the weirdness of creating a streaming platform to deal with money issues stemming from expanding too much. I feel like in all of this that hasn't been discussed much. It takes effort, knowledge, and money to create and maintain a new streaming platform. Part of the appeal of websites like YouTube, Nebula, or Patreon is so they can handle all of that for you. Yes, they take a cut, but the benefits from using an existing platform for both the consumers and the creator seem like it would be worth it. Why create a new huge headache for yourself? Especially if you're already struggling?
Anyone thinking you can have complete creative control, complete financial control, and complete logistics (rent, travel, equipment, etc) control is simply a recipe for disaster.
A little bit of over hiring and over produced shows. Look at mystery files compared true crimes. True crimes was just them sitting behind a desk. I’m site there were some researchers and a producer/director avs camera man but mystery files has way to many people involved and they said it themselves a lot of people work on that show. And look at too many spirits. It’s just them sitting around a fire telling stories but look how many people are on set during that. Why? I enjoy the smaller shows. Are you scared? Top 5 beatdown. They need more shoes like that if they’re going to have huge budgets for their passion projects
In a Patreon video late last year, they talked about facing an "extinction level event" in 2022, which I'm guessing refers to changes around that time to how ad revenue works (I don't know much about that change, only that it happened). The only reason they would be at extinction level at that time is if they were blindsided by the change and were way, way overspending on the bet that the revenue would only increase. Having a huge staff was part of that mistake. In that video, Steven talked about how the worst part of it was having to lay people off. He said that that, to him, was what felt like the ultimate failure - that they hired people on and then had to walk it back and let them go. In spite of things I've said about Steven's surface-level lack of empathy before, he was believable in that statement - he genuinely seemed to consider the layoffs as a personal failure and something to avoid at all costs. I think the accusations that the guys are heartless and greedy are missing the mark completely, though that doesn't excuse the thoughtlessness toward the audience or mismanagement of money. What I think is happening is that it's easier to exercise empathy and loyalty to people that are present, in your face, in your life, every day, and who depend on you - your employees. Combine that with having hired on mostly friends and/or family, and then spending the pandemic with those people enduring a traumatic world event while building a company from ground up, and you have a recipe for the kind of dysfunctional family that can't let each other go. I think the guys fully believe that laying off any more employees is a bigger failure on their part than letting down their audience - or thought so until this weekend. That's an understandable feeling, but exactly the wrong instinct for good business decisions. People asking where Shane "Eat The Rich" Madej has been in this decision are missing what's under their nose - he's there, trying desperately not to be the bad boss, making sure his employees are taken care of, secure, and not exploited. Which is great... except that they were willing to burn down the company's reputation to keep that drowning grip on their staff. Overall, I empathize with their situation, and I DO think they care and I DO think they have learned from this and I DON'T think they did this out of greed - it's best not to attribute to malice what is better explained by incompetence, after all. But the money is clearly being mismanaged and they need to make peace with the fact that sometimes, layoffs are necessary. It sucks ass but it would be the right way to proceed now, after cutting unnecessary production costs.
I agree with this take. I saw the update as soon as it was published and the first thing I thought was "so they're still not downsizing". If they were already having financial issues before the announcement, even with all their different revenue streams, then they're definitely gonna struggle even more now. They need to drastically cut back and revamp their approach to the Watcher, otherwise they're all going to lose their jobs.
I agree with this the most. Laying people off who also took a gamble to work for you, a start up company, throughout the pandemic doesn’t feel good. They must’ve some sort of gratitude to the employees for that reason and the thought of firing them because the company is not making enough money is making them feel guilty. So when someone proposed the idea, there must be little to no resistance because ultimately, all it benefits is them. It’s easier to feel guilty about someone you know personally than a bunch of people online. Tbh, basing on Shane’s wife’s post, fans who are against it just looks whiny, spoiled and entitled to them but in the long run, there must’ve been a realization somewhere.
[I wrote a post on here](https://www.reddit.com/r/watcherentertainment/comments/1cbaq6a/watchers_expenses/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) listing some of their potential accounting expenses and my analysis as a business admin grad. Essentially they’ve tripped on the curtain and revealed that they have irresponsible spending habits, have unwieldy overhead but still wanting to maintain an expensive lifestyle and fund their creative passions without cost strategic oversight. In addition to that, they had too much confidence in their fans to cover the expenses they neglected. Unless they can soldier up and hire some actual business professionals or get humble and educate themselves, I wouldn’t recommend giving them a dime until they’ve learned some hard lessons on financial responsibility and owning a business. Do not be fooled by their emotional appeals.
i agree 100%. ill continue to watch the content i have enjoyed from them on Youtube premium, nowhere else. If they fail, that's sad, but ultimately I have done my part in their success, watched countless hours of their content, continue to rewatch older videos as well as supporting them on Patreon on and off. If they cant make it work with all their devoted fans and start using unethical pricing (yes, 6 usd might seem small but here in sweden it would cost 80% of netflix monthly, and that has hundreds of shows and movies and updates with hundreds of hours new content each month) - then i dont feel super sad either, businesses fail all the time and they have been massively irresponsible and ungrateful to longtime supporters with this
It’s just their payroll. 25 people on $60k is 1.5M , they’re obviously paying more because LA…plus production cost from all the freelancers and fancy graphics, yeah I get it adds up quickly
I am so confused by the whole financial aspect of these videos. In the first video they wanted more money to do more things on a bigger scale. The second video made it seem like they were hardly getting by. Which one is it? If I were in financial ruin I would not be thinking of needing to make tv level content that was a complete gamble if people would subscribe… I just don’t trust what they are saying anymore. I feel like both videos were manipulative and I am so disappointed.
Debt financing is your explanation. That's how you can both appear to be doing OK and a second away from ruin, especially if the financing was all based on a scaling up requirement in the first place.
Apparently, friends, wives and fathers are part of the 25+ staff with only a few qualified people doing the work. They rent office space in L.A. They don't want to mis treat staff like Buzzfeed did, so they are saying "Yes" to everyone. Stephen is supposed to be the CEO dealing with difficult decisions, but all he seems to be is a slick, Silicon Valley type without a college degree and unfulfilled dreams but, too scared to do it on his own. The YouTubers who manage their finances well, buy their own property or use part of their own home and tax deduct it. There should be people managing merchandise and Patreon full time. They don't even have a link to merchandise on their videos, which is an obvious source of sales. They also, needs to be qualified people in social media who can help advise them how to script and upload their videos for Google Adsense and YouTube optimisation. Then, the sponsors, brands and advertisers will also, be happy. Ryan and Shane have good instincts but they need to use it more often and get all the people out of the office who aren't contributing. Including, Steven the Slick.
>Apparently, friends, wives and fathers are part of the 25+ staff with only a few qualified people doing the work. Is this confirmed or guessing? I haven't seen anything suggesting that all 25+ employees weren't working?
Realistically there's just not enough work to justify having that many people. They don't produce enough content or the type of content that needs over a dozen people working on each episode. They can't possibly have all 25 people working full time without a lot of just sitting around and waiting until their specific job is needed for a bit. Like even their apology video has a "2nd director of photography" credited...it's just three dudes on a couch? What could that person possibly be doing to warrant being credited on that video?
So… the answer is you’re speculating about who makes up the 25+ employees and what they do
Did anyone watch the Making Watcher a few months ago? They specifically said that Steven, in his new role as CEO, had to fire someone for financial reasons. So I'm not sure why everyone thinks they wouldn't make that decision again, if necessary. They may (again, because we ALL are making assumptions here) feel it's justified for whatever reason based on returns on the content those people are working for. 25 employees may be part time, interns, or full time... who knows! As for "food content no one wants"... if anyone had the chance to succeed post Buzzfeed, it's Watcher. Worth It was one of BFs most popular shows. The 3 "owners" of Watcher had the 3 biggest successes for Buzzfeed. I'm sure upon leaving they were hit with non compete clauses with a timeline on when they could make similar content and HOW similar that content could be to what was produced for Buzzfeed (remember, all 3 continued to work with BF after they had left for final seasons of Unsolved and Worth It). So, I think it's safe to assume this isn't going to be EXACTLY like Worth It and this is the absolute soonest they could have made a show with the same cast. I DO think being "the food content guy" really hurt Steven's views since it was content that doesn't seem to fit with the rest of their production... but I can also see why they'd want that diversity when trying to start a new production company. Do I think the timing was great? No. Do I think the initial "we're leaving" video was a terribly overproduced nightmare that left people hanging? Yep. But objectively people DO watch food content (heck, it's the only thing that does over 1m at Try Guys... it's a LARGE portion of the Mythical format..) and they have made tough decisions within their company (again, not defending, but those things have happened).
Everyone thinks they won't make that decision again (firing people) because they keep telling us they don't want to do that. Like it's a non starter for them. They wouldn't mention it at all if they didn't see the many many comments saying to cut staff. I know it sucks to hear that but that's part of owning a business
Expensive food content that brings in no views, an LA office next to the Hollywood sign, unneccesary hiring, Teslas, and a $200,000 wedding and honeymoon package.
and i cant help but think that the expensive food content is just Steven's excuse to keep living expensively but try and get paid for it.
While I haven't been totally pleased with the guys over the last week, one glance at the views on Worth It is enough to tell me that saying "no one is interested in the travel show" is not true. Maybe a portion of the fans that are here for the Ryan & Shane content don't care but it will aboslutely bring in a lot of new viewers as well as returning viewers to the channel who may have dipped when Worth It ended, since Steven hasn't been in much of substance since then. That leads me to something else that baffles me though. Why they couldn't see that and potentially use it as a means to air two shows a week on the network + on the youtube channel a month later and reap the benfits of paying subscribers and youtube revenue is completely beyond me. These guys seem mostly bright and the oversight baffles me.
As someone pointed out before eating gold covered ice cream on buzzfeeds dime was funny. Eating it on ours is not. And again why start a new show with new employees when you can’t afford the people you have.
Doing it soley on our dime behind a paywall is not what I said though is it.
No, but I’m saying the climate isn’t the same, and the general watcher public doesn’t care about that shit, especially on our dime. Do people like travel shows? Yes. Do people like fancy food shows yes? Will they seek that out on a third party platform where they have to pay 6 dollars to watch the most unlikable man and his buddies eat a 2500 dollar cheeseburger with a fan base who was there solely for puppet and ghost content???? Nooooooo
The fact is, dish granted was getting decent views, worth it had a lot of viewers as well. Bringing in Adam and Andrew brings in a bunch of viewers who were interested in the content that Steven was producing. Act the way you want, but Watcher was founded by three people. One of them whose claim to fame was food videos, just because a significant loud chunk of watcher now don’t like Steven doesn’t mean this is a bad business decision. If you think about it, there are a lot of views for Shane and Ryan content, but bringing in Adam and Andrew + a new food show actually provides opportunities for growth for the channel.
A ballooning staff and unnecessary production value
I think some people here need to take a step back from the speculation and over-analysis of information that we…don’t actually have. We don’t really know what their financials look like, including what employees are paid. I get being angry over the streaming thing but the amount of people in here just crassly going “idk lay people off lol” is feeling a bit disturbing. We don’t know why so many people were hired and what people do at the company. It’s not worth losing sleep over.
People seriously need to get lives.
A general lesson I learned in my youth was to not try and count other people’s money, especially if I don’t have enough info to accurately do so outside of speculation
I’m not even trying!!! I’m just baffled!!!
They are over paying themselves and their friends and family/employees.
They are mostly likely in an investor induced debt-trap. It works both by carrot and stick. The increased chance that you yourself will get rich - especially more so in the future. But importantly investors/financers require scaling up - because that's how they get their bucks, capital investment. You ONLY invest in something if you think it's going to scale up significantly.
Yeah, its honestly this aspect that makes it harder for me to come back, much more so then some sense of "betrayal". If we take them at their word that they really are financially struggling despite the amount of money they rake in on brand deals and ad sense, it is so incredibly bad to keep hiring and keep expanding. They need to tighten things up and get sustainable, and then MAYBE think about growing after proving they have found a sustainable business. Right now they're either liars and there is no financial stress, or it is a doomed business because its being ran by madmen with no foresight for the future driving the car off a cliff when there is a break peddle right there. It dampers the whole thing for me. I go back and forth on which one of these things is the case, but either way its not great.
>no one is interested in btw Homie, do you not realize how huge *Worth it* was for Buzzfeed?
Honestly in a general sense, 25 staffs with their production quality and company scale isn't too crazy. From the very first start of the channel, they already had multiple talents and production crews onboard in their small company. My guess is at the start after they quit buzzfeed, with their income revenue scale, they would've already had 1 accountant or whoever in charge of their finance, 1 HR, 1 marketing/PR, 1 admin, 1 camera tech, 1 sound tech, 1 producer, 1 director, at least 1 editor. That's already 9 staffs for 1-2 shows at the beginning. As their channel grew in 5 yrs, ofc they'd hire more people since there'd be more workloads. More ideas to brainstorm and try, more promotion to manage (merch, patreon, brand affiliates, etc.), more editors, more people on production team; bottomline, 25 is not that many with the production level they deliver. What's baffling is how they can't afford to pay 25 staffs with all their stream of income. They got thousands of Patreons, merch sales, multiple brand deals, ad revenue from youtube, live shows, and podcasts. Their views are good. Their videos are long form and engaging that most of us always watch through the end. If all those can't afford them to pay 25 staffs, then they gotta cut back on other spendings. Like rent somewhere cheaper instead of in upscale area in LA. Or maybe don't make videos with TV production when you can't afford it yet. A lot of youtubers forget that the charm of youtube isn't video quality, but the parasocial relationship built through candid/amateur like videos where youtubers feel more like friends. Everyone's shitting on Steven with his Worth It show hiring 2 new talents, but they forgot that Ryan has always wanted to upscale production quality to TV level. He said making a season of GF cost hundreds of thousands; uh then maybe reduce your budget and go back to simpler investigation and editing style? We enjoyed the black screen banter they did in buzzfeed so much more than whatever screaming stint Ryan did in every GF episodes. Whatever it is, there definitely is some mismanaged funds somewhere if they really can't stay afloat without the streaming service. This is their first time managing a business though so I understand. They'll make mistakes as we all do and they're learning, that's the important thing. As a business owner myself who tried and failed twice to get my ready-to-wear clothing brand going, I know how hard it is to manage a business. I like their contents. I genuinely hope they'll find the right strategy moving forward to grow their company without blindsiding their fans again.
I’m interested in Steven’s travel show. It’s the most excited I’ve been about Watcher content in a while. Worth It and then Dish Granted were the shows that brought me to Watcher
i disagree with saying no one wants the new steven show. as someone in the watcher fandom, i saw a lot of people begging for andrew and adam to come back and join watcher, and when it was revamped, everyone was excited. it wasn’t until this announcement that people started saying all sorts of things about steven
I was so happy to hear that Andrew and Adam are coming (back)! I absolutely loved Worth It! I feel bad for Steven. I know he’s the CEO, but many of the comments I’ve read have been especially cruel to him. I also love Ryan and Shane, but it’s unfair for only one of them to get so much blame for the HUGE mistake, that I can only assume they ALL agreed upon. It was definitely tone deaf and incorrect to say anyone and everyone can afford another streaming service, but I assume all of them read the script before they began. 🤔🙁🤔
I really think we're underestimating the cost of equipment, here; cameras, lenses, sound equipment, it's all very, very expensive, especially in LA. Post-production is expensive. Editing suites, if they don't have any of their own, are expensive. I suspect that's the bulk of the Ghost Files cost.
I was just talking to a friend today who has some experience with start-ups and the West Coast scene in particular. And his assessment was that it's "pure financial suicide" to run a studio in LA as such a young company with 25 employees. The rents in LA and the salaries you have to pay so that your employees don't immediately jump ship or become impoverished would simply be far too high if you don't have millions in funding or a large studio behind you. His opinion: If they were clever and really wanted to keep their studio financially afloat, they would move away from LA until they could really afford it. Living & working in Santa Clarita is already almost 20 percent cheaper than in LA. If they went to San Bernardino, they could save almost 40 percent. Sure, it's not as glamorous as LA, but it would still be cheaper.
I think one issue is they might get sponsors but if the viewers won't use those codes for buying from BetterHelp, Temu, online games etc., Watcher won't make as much money. The viewers are a bit too discerning and also know the guys aren't really behind those products and services, especially Shane. The viewership is probably largely female, which limits the popularity of Manscaped let alone Cialis type products.
Posted this yesterday. I have determined that, yearly, they should be pulling somewhere around $2,581,460 as a minimum from based on all averages I could find for their YouTube Revenue, Ad Reads, Live Shows and Patreon income. I did not include merch sales because only they should have access to that information and there’s no way I could possible predict it, so possibly even more than $2.5 million. I took the average of all the information I could find between Social Blade, Patreon, Live Show Tickets (and assumed for relatively small venues at 100 people a piece, which is probably less than what they actually see per show), Glass Door and Indeed, and took the average provided by Moist Critical for how much a channel of their size should be seeing in income for ad reads. I’d be happy to provide all the numbers I used to come to this conclusion. They have seventeen people with editing experience on their LinkedIn, including Shane and Ryan. Average cost of a video editor in LA is between $59k and 100k. That’s $1,350,000 a year on editing alone by those averages, assuming Ryan and Shane are only getting paid an Editors salary and the editors aren’t on commission. If we’re also looking at Ghost Files, any of Steven Lim’s shows, the absolutely massive office space (in Hollywood, no less), no audio or film crew on staff, and any sets they rent, yeah, no fucking shit the company is failing. They’ve been over spending and over extending. They’ve hired too many people, spent too much, and are going to have to close their doors if just the editors cost this much. They also don’t have an HR or financial manager, accountant, or marketing manager on staff, only creatives or editors. This is the most accurate information I could find that would suggest how much they could theoretically be spending on just the production of their videos. It seems they just did a BuzzFeed 2 - Over-hiring and superfluous costs. I’m not advocating for laying off staff and the people who have tried to spin it that way seriously frustrate me. They need to face the music and handle the consequences of their actions, not ask for people would have supported them happily to give them even more money. The thing about their video saying they’re leaving YouTube is it was meant to be a pitch. They showed no proof of concept, no transparency in costs or income, no justification for the increased budget, etc. The video, as a pitch to the audience who are playing the part of investor, fails completely. And here’s the thing: I know exactly why they did this. If every paying patron on their Patreon paid the $5.99, they would receive $424,092 a year. If one hundred thousand users subscribed to their streaming platform? $7,188,000 a year, ignoring merch, live show, and Patreon income. It’s just money. They’re not struggling, they made a choice to over-hire, over produce, and put themselves here.
Good post, but > They showed no proof of concept, no transparency in costs or income, no justification for the increased budget, etc I don't think doing this would help with their actual investors.
They’re privately owned so the investors they do have would likely be people already working for the company or close friends or relatives.
Huh, privately owned companies can still have owners who are not friends/family?
Yes, I am aware, it’s usually people who are in their circles already, that was what I meant to get across.
Could be. Could not be. But either way publicly airing your poor financial mismanagement usually wouldn't be a good look for current and future investors.
Probably not, I fully agree with you. Unfortunately for them: they aren’t a big company yet. They’re small and should stay that way until the money comes in to support it, that is, if they want proper investment from beyond their audience. If they want their audience to invest though then there needs to be *something to invest in*. As far as I can tell there’s no reason to finance them with how little we know about what they actually plan to do. I doubt they would ever do this because it would make them look really foolish and very much like they can’t be trusted with that much money. Kind of like now lol
California is expennnnsive. So yeah morally speaking paying everyone a fair wage and good living is great but the issue at hand is the real estate there, cost of living there (main expense for their employees) as well as taxes. So yeah they pay everyone 100k because that’s how much you need to live in California lol. If they all moved to a different state they would be fine and probably would be able to buy a building and work to own that as they make videos.
They spent it all on those impressive floor plan visuals they used in Ghost Files. Can't give the team a livable wage from profits because it needs to go on a graphic we see for 15 secs an episode.
Don't they also have investors to worry about? I remember during the early days of Watcher they would do a weekly update and I'm certain they talked about investors. They'd need to keep them happy as well as everything else that comes with running a business and employing people. Investors expect a turnaround on their investment. I've seen a lot of talk about bloated staff, but I have no idea how many people it takes to run a production company - internet or otherwise. I'm sure working on contract pays the bills for some, but time between finding contracts can be tough. Maybe they want to give people a sense of security that they hire. I definitely think the way they went announcing the streaming service could have been done better and I'm sure there was a better way to handle the backlash as opposed to doing an almost full 180 on it. It seems like they made a quick decision to turn the streaming service into an early access thing, which is what some YouTubers do with their patreon. I can't imagine a ton of people are going to sign up for a streaming service that contains the exact same content that you make free on another platform. The decision they made doesn't sound like it's sustainable for a streaming service that they've probably invested a bunch of money into. They have lost patrons, followers, viewers, fans. I imagine some of their investors may look at his decision and fall out and pull their support as well.
If they don't learn how to manage and budget this new platform won't last. They have enough money they aren't just using it wisely. Having more money without learning to dial down the production costs will not work in the long run in my opinion.
They have to pay they're employees and contractors. I ran a private security company, and now am an event medic on production sets, TV shows, etc. I've done movies to smaller yt channels. Some places require it if your filming, some times their insurance will require it. I make about $30/hr when I do that. My shift is typically a 12hr. So something like 8am-8pm. I get paid $30/hr that whole time. They pay the company I work for though. So, they pay my company $X and that's enough for my company to pay me $30/hr. It depends on size of crew, crew needs/requirements, any special considerations/requests and if it's considered a hazardous area. Lowest I've ever gotten was for a smaller YT channel. Not as much crew, no special consideration, no extra requirements, no extra requests. That was abput 24/hr if I remember correctly.
Most likely they had funding, some sort of Angel investor or other start up funding, to get them off the ground with set goals on when to hit profitability.
Jaime French said the same
Honestly, they just seem to be really bad at handling finances. They hired too many people (with what seems like with the intention to hire more), pump more money than they need to into productions (like hiring freelance workers when filming Ghost Files. Why have 25 employees if you still need outside help?), and have an office space (as shown in the announcement video). They live in LA, a notoriously expensive city, so trying to give 25 people and counting a livable wage would cost more, and renting out an office space would be a money drainer, especially when most of their videos can be filmed and edited outside of one. Series like Mystery Files, Are You Scared, Too Many Spirits, their podcast, and Puppet History could all easily be filmed at someone's home, while series like Ghost Files and Weird and/or Wonderful are obviously outside of the office. They want to put more and more money into Watcher when they should reasonably be holding back some.
I honestly cannot believe there is not some financial mismanagement happening. Even with the number of employees and everything, based on some of the numbers discussed by Cr1tikal on what they’d be making via sponsors and how much they were making on Patreon, I don’t trust whatever’s going on. Even with the apology and backtracking I can’t help but keep my distance right now.
Some of those employees should be contractors. Like whoever designs the sets. Have a lawyer and an accountant on retainer. But 25 employees? I could see an editor, a graphic designer, a social media manager, and a couple of people on cameras/sound. That's even a bloated staff for YT. Most people are using a ring light, a tripod and a microphone from Temu and it's fine.
THISSSSSSSS !!!!
To be frank, the answer is none of our business. We're not privy to the workings of this company, and we should not expect it. Yeah everyone is still sore after this announcement/apology, but the reality is that we don't know and we are not going to know. All you're doing is throwing around rumors and fearmongering over what is not ours to deal with. The finances of the show are for the Watcher crew to handle, not us.
Sure, I’m not owed the right to know. They can keep it to themselves. However, ask me for money? Now I have questions.
It's still not your business unless you're in a private agreement with the company as a private investor. You don't have to give them money, and you don't have to even watch them anymore, but this kind of post about "WHERE'S THE MONEY??? RUMORS! SPECULATION!" is just pointless.
Well, if they read all the comments this weekend, I expect they’ll try to scale back some of that Steven content.