After viewer backlash, Watcher’s content is staying on YouTube. But the studio says it’s struggling.
Last week, Watcher–the content studio founded in 2019 by former Buzzfeed-ers Ryan Bergara, Steven Lim, and Shane Madej–surprised viewers by announcing it would no longer be uploading its videos to YouTube.
Instead, it said, it would take further episodes of shows like Ghost Files, Mystery Files, and Puppet History to its own new, standalone, and paywalled platform, where fans would have to pay $6/month or $60/year to watch.
The backlash to this announcement was swift and vicious. Watcher’s YouTube channel lost more than 50,000 subscribers in 24 hours, and nearly 100,000 over the weekend. Commenters on the announcement video and across social media were particularly rankled by Lim’s assertion that the subscription service’s $6/month price had been picked because it was “low enough where anybody and everybody is able to afford it.”
Now, Watcher has rolled back this decision. In an update video, Bergara, Lim, and Madej apologized...
Instead, it said, it would take further episodes of shows like Ghost Files, Mystery Files, and Puppet History to its own new, standalone, and paywalled platform, where fans would have to pay $6/month or $60/year to watch.
The backlash to this announcement was swift and vicious. Watcher’s YouTube channel lost more than 50,000 subscribers in 24 hours, and nearly 100,000 over the weekend. Commenters on the announcement video and across social media were particularly rankled by Lim’s assertion that the subscription service’s $6/month price had been picked because it was “low enough where anybody and everybody is able to afford it.”
Now, Watcher has rolled back this decision. In an update video, Bergara, Lim, and Madej apologized...
- 4/22/2024
- by James Hale
- Tubefilter.com
Watcher Entertainment is moving on from YouTube to its own subscription service. The trio of Ryan Bergara, Shane Madej, and Steven Lim have cultivated a massive following since breaking off from BuzzFeed and are officially taking the next big step with the launch of Watcher, the new home for their original series, including fan-favorites Ghost Files, Mystery Files, and Puppet History. The service is currently in its beta period from now until May 31, when Lim's new food show Travel Season with his former Worth It colleagues Andrew Ilnyckyj and Adam Bianchi launches.
- 4/19/2024
- by Ryan O'Rourke
- Collider.com
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