greenlivvie

[greenlivvie]

if you start reading books again. you will feel at least a little better. I promise

#started reading this collection of articles by patrick radden keefe ...... and the world seems a little brighter #hes such a good writer #also reading the book about boeing. also a good writer

[greenlivvie]

Absolutely AMAZING response by Watcher imo.

They acknowledged that they made a mistake, made the wider context more clear, and addressed basically all of the criticisms brought forward by the community as far as I know.

Anyone who already subscribed to the streaming service who no longer wants it gets a refund.

Patrons get a free subscription to the streaming service.

The service now only offers early, ad-free episodes that will still be released on YouTube.

They acknowledged the insensitivity of the original pitch and how the price is not something that everyone can afford.

THIS is how you respond to backlash, especially this widespread. Take time to collect your thoughts, take the criticism into account, and change your actions going forward.

Great job Watcher 👏

#i appreciate this actually #well done boys

[greenlivvie]

@neoneun-au you're the only person i can think of who might appreciate this haha

Miles is ONCE AGAIN here with the jokes

#miles used to (and still collaborates with) try guys

[greenlivvie]

i am really so sorry to continue harping on about the watcher entertainment streaming service. but this kind of stuff (internet content as a business & marketing it as such) is truly my obsession, and i think i will implode if i don't talk about some of the takes i'm seeing.

i'd like to emphasize again i don't have strong feelings about watcher either way. i like ghost files, i watch mystery files sometimes, i watched worth it back in the buzzfeed days. i don't watch any of their shows religiously.

anyway, here's the main things i keep seeing crop up and my thoughts on each:

"watcher has 25 employees they have to pay, and employing people in this economy is good, so we should be banding together to pay them."

employing people is good if you currently have the capacity to pay them. i checked watcher's linkedin page, and many of their employees were hired within the last year or two. if they hired people they cannot pay with the business model they had before, something is seriously wrong with their internal bookkeeping/decision making. it means they either didn't know they couldn't pay these people long term, or they did know and were content with risking newly hired employees' livelihoods on a huge content pivot in the next year.

of note is that none of their employees' titles have anything to do with managing the finances of the company. they are the size of a small business but have no one aside from the figureheads of the company in charge of their finances.

this is the kind of company decision making that leads to downsizing and layoffs, which can be devastating. but you know what's worse than laying off a portion of your staff? laying off everyone because your business is going under.

"not everyone can afford the subscription, but those who can should pay it to support the watcher team."

no. $6/month for a couple hours of content (depending on what shows you actively watch and the natural fluctuation of their release schedule) is a fundamentally bad value. i can pay that much for a few movies on amazon. i can pay that much for dropout, if i want to support a smaller business instead.

and to be totally frank, even if people do sign up, i don't think they'd get enough to compete with the amount they get through patreon/sponsorships. and the fact that they didn't know how many of their subscribers would realistically sign up is a bad sign.

a pretty good conversion rate of free to paid subscribers of a service or content is 3% (usually accomplished through a free trial). given the very poor reception of the announcement, let's say about 1% of their 3 mil youtube subs pay for their service. that's 30k people paying for their new platform. that's $180k a month in their pocket.

(they currently only have 12k subs on patreon so we are being generous here.)

a sponsorship deal (based on my googling, i have less direct experience with this) is anywhere from $10-50 per 1000 views. they've gotten about 1 mil views on their last few videos. 3 mil subs is nothing to shake a stick at, but let's say they're on the lower end of the payscale at $25 per 1000 views. that's $25k a video, $100k a month if they release 1 video a week. their lowest patreon tier is 5 bucks, so even if all their subs are at that tier, that's another $60k, so $160k total. it's entirely likely they're bringing in much more than that when you factor in merch, adsence, etc.

did anyone on their team crunch numbers on how many people would need to sub to make the switch worth it? did anyone do market research on how many people they could convert to paid users? because if not, if they really didn't have a game plan for this, the subscription service was always doomed to fail.

"this was their only option to continue making the content they want to make, with the production value they want."

i watched their announcement video. a key point in that video is that they have done sponsored videos and that's what used to pay for their content, but they did not like the amount of creative control the sponsor had over the content.

look, i get that's no fun. we'd all love creatives to be able to make whatever they want. but when you are a small business with a team of employees relying on you, you have to think about making money, sometimes at the cost of creative liberties.

and they had so many other options to make money for the projects they want to make without jumping to a subscription platform.

they could have started actually promoting their patreon, and maybe done some restructuring of the tiers. why not a highly produced, special series just for patreon members? or a special high-budget episode of each series, while the main series is lower budget?

bite the bullet and continue taking sponsorship deals on some less-produced shows, while axing sponsorships from the ones the crew feels more passionate about.

schedule larger, blowout-production shows only when they can be afforded. this is what Notorious Amongus Guy streamer jerma does. he saves up for big productions like his baseball or dollhouse streams, so he can really get creative with them.

they had other options and they've tried very little, especially when you compare them to other content house business at similar scales. try guys and good mythical morning both put out significant content with significant staff, and have had to diversify their income streams with auxiliary products, shows with widely varied levels of production, etc. but it seems to be working for them. watcher has merch and that's about it, and seems to only want to increase the production quality of ALL their shows.

really, all this just boils down to a terrible business decision. it's hard to say if the watcher team is working with a consultant or anyone outside of their team, but they certainly don't have anyone internally who is experienced with running a business like this. to me, it seems very much like they got in a room together and did some extremely optimistic income ballparking with no research behind it.

and that might have been fine for three dudes running a channel alone, but if they're a business, they have to start making decisions like one.

#well said op! #somehow they 1) massively misunderstood what their audience would think about this #2) didnt explore other very legitimate ideas for money making #3) misunderstood why their audience watches them (its not for tbe super high production value) #4) kept continuing some supremely expensive shows that -- honestly -- is not what people like about them (like worth it!) #like for some reason they think they need to add more money to their episodes and not just a couple of seasons of cheaply produced -- #-- puppet history (which is a massive crowd favorite!!) #idk who is asking for more money into production. we show up for the dynamics and creativity #this reminds me of the way everyone watched try guys when the ned thing happened #except in that case the guys had no control over it and they did everything they could to manage the aftermath #watcher on the other hand seem to have shot themselves on the food and are refusing to acknowledge it #re.blog

[greenlivvie]

When Adam bit the apple he did it because he trusted Eve. Because he loved her. Adam bit into the apple because the woman he loved told him to, no matter what God said. No matter the rules of heaven. What’s heaven to a woman’s love anyway? What’s God to your wife? The first sins of humanity, were trusting others. Eve trusted a snake, Adam trusted Eve, and I trust you. Maybe that’s a sin, just like the first couple. Maybe everyone’s right about us and we’re sinners and we offend God. But like I said, what’s God to a woman’s love anyway? What has heaven got that I can’t find sitting next to you on a cool autumn morning?

#oh great #another thing to think about and cry

[greenlivvie]

Happiness Will Come To You.

#i certainly hope so #this month has been a cornucopia of emotions that i feel totally unequipped to deal with

[greenlivvie]

[on the verge of having a complete breakdown] i need to make some kind of list or perhaps sort things into categories

#oh yes #enough notion pages can change my life

[greenlivvie]

#my current state #im tipsy ha ha

[greenlivvie]

The eternal question - is it worse to read the words of someone who hates a character you love but is accurate/respectful in their points/portrayal, or someone who loves them more than you do but strips them of all nuance and greyness to legit "they did nothing wrong" when they did SO MUCH WRONG?

#agree with you mads; the latter is always worse

[greenlivvie]

an underrated detail in pride and prejudice is that elizabeth bennett was home alone on the day darcy proposed because she had a headache. can you imagine. this was in the pre-painkillers era. you're at home with a headache and then this asshole walks into the room and tells you he loves you and wants to marry you even though he hates your whole family and you're beneath him. imagine having to deal with that while also having a headache. she doesn't even have ibuprofen

[greenlivvie]

[greenlivvie]

Forgot “knot” means a big wad of cash and nearly had a fit over this Eminem song

#lmao #lyrics

[greenlivvie]

kaveh akbar, 'calling a wolf a wolf' // doc luben, 'love letters or suicide notes' // @/nutnoce, tumblr // 'my body's made of crushed little stars', mitski // @/ojibwa, tumblr // 'spring', mary oliver

#web weaving #words

[greenlivvie]

@roach-works // Melissa Broder, "Problem Area" // Mary Oliver, "The Return" // @annavonsyfert // Koyoharu Gotouge, Demon Slayer // Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance // David Levithan, How They Met and Other Stories // Tennessee Williams, Notebooks

#the tags: its a nice realization op! #web weaving #words

[greenlivvie]

Euripides (Tr. Anne Carson) / @wholeheartedsuggestions / Jenny Slate / Euripides again

#the last one always takes me to another place #web weaving #words

[greenlivvie]

{Quotes:Nitya prakash/Richard siken ,crush}

#oh gentleness #words #web weaving

[greenlivvie]

grieving the person you used to be

marian keyes// ?// bigger than the whole sky, taylor swift// fiona apple// @inkskinned// would've, could've, should've, taylor swift// father, the front bottoms// @inanotherunivrse// ?// memento mori, crywank// @dakotajohnsongf// @ryebreadgf// quote: deathless, catherynne m. valente edit:? // bojack horseman s6 e16// a pearl, mitski// would've, could've,should've, taylor swift// ?// ?// ?// @heavensghost

#web weaving #lyrics #words #so well put together op