If you regularly visit the same corners of the Internet as
me, then you’ve probably caught wind of several former members of Channel
Awesome airing grievances about the site’s issues with management,
communication and mistreatment of its contributors, with the brunt of the ire
aimed at the site’s owners, Doug Walker, Rob Walker, and especially the
company’s CEO, Mike Michaud, calling for them to take responsibility for their
actions, often followed with the hashtag #ChangeTheChannel. What started as a
few people venting about their past employers on Twitter quickly escalated into
a movement to hold them accountable, culminating in a 73-page
Google Document full of testimonies from over 20 former Channel Awesome producers
detailing their time there with accusations ranging from negligence,
incompetence and communication issues to abuse of power and even covering up
instances of sexual harassment and misconduct. Some of this was already public
knowledge that fans were privy to for years, but no one knew just how dire it
was until this document was released. Channel Awesome quickly responded with a
half-assed non-apology and an
even more disastrous response that deflected blame on the victims, spread
awareness of their misdeeds even further, caused nearly every contributor on the site to flee like drowning rats, and irreparably destroyed what
little good will they had with their fanbase. To call it a PR disaster would be
a massive understatement.
For me, this really hurts. I’ve been a big fan of Channel
Awesome since 2009. They’re the main reason why I’m a film critic. It was a
site that I visited almost daily for nearly six years back when it was That Guy
with The Glasses. I count Todd
in the Shadows, Lindsay
Ellis, JesuOtaku and Kyle
Kallgren as some of my biggest early influences. It was like a second home
to me. I was a regular member of the forums, where I made several friends that
I’m still close with to this very day. It was on their blog section where I
began posting my first written reviews (most of the people there did video
reviews, but I resorted to written reviews since I didn’t have a camera or
editing software and have zero camera charisma), which lead me to a spot on the
now defunct Man In Black Reviews and the dormant ThatRuled.com, where I posted
articles and partook in podcasts. If it weren’t for Channel Awesome, this blog
probably wouldn’t even exist. Suffice to say, watching a site that I had such a
big attachment to go down in flames in such a fashion in real time is like
watching the fall of the Roman Empire.
Now I know what some of you are thinking: What is Channel
Awesome, what did they do that was so heinous and why should I care? To give a
clear answer to that, I’ll first have to give a potted history of the site.
This chronicle covers about ten years, involves several key players and moving
parts, so while I won’t be able to cover absolutely everything, I will try
my best to cover the important bits.
Channel Awesome is an aggregator site based in Chicago
founded by Doug Walker and a few others in 2008 with a focus on comedic
pop-culture-centric content. Walker gained popularity with his web series “The
Nostalgia Critic”, where he did comedic reviews of terrible movies from his
childhood, and “5 Second Movies”, which used clips from popular films to sum up
the plot in five seconds or less. After his YouTube channels kept getting taken
down for copyright issues, Doug had had enough, and he, along with his brother
Rob and their friend Mike Michaud, created their own website,
That Guy With The Glasses, later changed to Channel Awesome, and started
hosting their videos on Blip, which was much more lax about the use of
copyrighted material. (Many who make videos in this style rely heavily on
footage of their subject matter to illustrate a point.) They began hosting
videos from producers who made similar content covering subject matter ranging
from movies to comic books to video games and music. Many of these producers
such as Linkara, Spoony, The Nostalgia Chick, Angry Joe and The Cinema Snob
would go on to gain significant followings of their own. As the site grew,
Nostalgia Critic and TGWTG, along with video producers like James “The Angry
Video Game Nerd” Rolfe and Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw and sites like ScrewAttack and
The Escapist helped create a small but vibrant community of online reviewers.
To understand why this was such a big deal, you need to
understand that YouTube back then was a very different place from what it is
now. It was very hard to monetize your videos, even with the introduction of
the ad program, the ten-minute time limit was heavily limiting for those who
wanted to post longform content, and they were much harsher on those who used
copyrighted material, even if it fell under Fair Use. For someone hoping to
find an audience in this particular niche, partnering with one of these
aggregators was the only option. However, Blip was bought by Maker Studios in
2015 and shut down later that year. Although much of the stuff on that site
wasn’t cataloged and has been lost to the sands of time, by that time, most of
the people who hosted their content on Blip had packed up and moved to YouTube,
which was more forgiving to popular producers, and crowdfunding sites like
Patreon made it possible for them to make a living without the need for ads. It
all came to a point where aggregator sites like Channel Awesome were all
obsolete. In fact, many producers thrived after they left.
But even before that, it was becoming abundantly clear that
Channel Awesome didn’t really have the producers’ best interest at heart.
If you want a short version of what went wrong, it can all
be boiled down to two simple factors: arrogance and incompetence. None of the
higher-ups had any experience in running a business, and Mike Michaud
supposedly stepped into the CEO role because nobody else wanted to. One of the
major issues with the site was miscommunication between the management and
producers. The only way to get a hold of them was through Skype, and when
producers didn’t meet standards or wanted certain issues addressed, they were met
with zero to minimum effort if the complaints came from men or were shouted
down and intimidated by Michaud if they came from women. There was even one
instance of a minor producer being denied the right to make a tribute to a
former team member who committed suicide because he was a minor player, and
nobody would care. Very few of the producers were payed directly by the site,
often treated like independent contractors and being paid only in “exposure”,
and for a while they weren’t allowed to support themselves by increasing
midrolls or promoting their Patreon if they had one, as the former was seen as
encouraging viewers to turn on AdBlock, and the latter was seen as “e-begging”.
One of the most infamous cases was with Allison Pregler, AKA
Obscurus Lupa, who spearheaded the #ChangeTheChannel movement and had a very public falling out with the site. She was often labeled as a
“troublemaker” and was even cornered by Michaud during a visit to Chicago about
increasing midrolls in her videos and promoting her Patreon, after which she
cried in the bathroom and when she told Doug about what happened, he was
dismissive. Eventually, she was fired for being 15 minutes late to a Skype call
since she was away from her computer. The next day, Phelan “Phelous” Porteous,
Allison’s boyfriend, quit in protest.
Probably the most egregious case detailed in the document
was from their former human resources manager, Holly Brown. According to many,
Holly was the only one in management who was truly sympathetic to the plights
of the producers, as many of the higher-ups were more focused on the Nostalgia
Critic and the core Chicago crew. She was one of the only people who knew how
to set up videos for the site and was tasked with setting up the schedule, and was
forced to work every single day, including weekends, holidays and hospital
visits (Holly is chronically ill). There was even a very bizarre instance involving
former CFO Mike Ellis, who had a history of sexual harassment, including
another case where he continuously pestered a former contributor with what can
only be described as “sexual venting”. Ellis relentlessly pursued a
relationship with Holly despite the fact that he was married, and his pursuits
were so persistent that after he was fired (something that happened after years
of complaints being ignored), the management placed Holly in a safehouse for
her own protection and even sent escorts armed with baseball bats and a sword.
Holly was fired in 2013 after missing a few days of work after surgery. In
order to receive her severance pay, something she needed to pay her medical
bills, they forced her to sign a contract stating that she couldn’t work in
this field for three years. Let that sink in. They forced a chronically ill woman to blacklist herself, so she could
have money that she needed to survive.
But that was all behind closed doors. Many producers got to
see the management’s incompetence firsthand during the making of the
anniversary movies.
During the first five years of the site’s existence, Channel
Awesome would celebrate their annual success by creating a massive crossover
event. They were The TGWTG 1st
Anniversary Brawl (which was the finale to a fake rivalry between the
Nostalgia Critic and the Angry Video Game Nerd), Kickassia, Suburban Knights, To Boldly Flee, and The Uncanny Valley. (Don’t bother
looking them up. Even by the standards of early 2010’s amateur web content,
they’re pretty unwatchable, especially To
Boldly Flee.) While they were used as an opportunity to for site members to
collaborate, by all accounts, the stories of these movies from the document
read like deleted scenes from The
Disaster Artist. (Ironic considering that one of Doug’s most popular videos
is his review of The Room.) During
the production of these movies, Doug Walker showed an overwhelming lack of
knowledge of filmmaking, not knowing basic things like the 180 rule or the
importance of multiple cameras, and even needed to be told to provide water
and craft services on set. Any complaints were met with an anti-intellectual
disdain, as Doug was convinced he didn’t need to know any of these things. And
this is a guy who is famous for reviewing bad movies. The producers were not
payed for their time there and were forced to hand over any crossover videos
they made in their downtime to recoup the costs. During the making of Suburban Knights, several actors were
injured on set, with one passing out after being taped to a wall, and the only
reason they weren’t compensated was because they signed contracts stating they
weren’t liable. One actress who was brought in at the last minute had her knee
bashed in and didn’t sign a contract until after the fact.
To Boldly Flee was
an especially unpleasant experience for nearly everyone involved. It was a
bloated 4-hour self-indulgent, sexist, mean-spirited ego trip that was pretentious
and un-self-aware in all the wrong ways. It was meant to be a final farewell to
the Nostalgia Critic before Doug retired the character, and the end was written
and shot in a way that suggested that “the age of reviewers” was over and
everyone on the site was retiring with him. Nobody knew this until they got the
script, and everyone felt that their livelihood was in uncertain jeopardy. But
by then, everyone had already been burned by their past experiences with the
Walkers, and whatever camaraderie was justified by the last two movies had been
depleted. The whole thing was shot over the course of seven days with shoots
lasting as long 18 hours, often stopped by the Walker brothers arguing over basic
filming techniques, and actors having to wait in the attic to shoot their scenes.
Lindsay Ellis and Linkara, both outspoken feminists, were forced to act out a
scene that was basically an extended rape joke, and both were dismissed by Doug
when they confronted him about it. After this, many producers swore off working
with the Walkers directly. The last anniversary film, The Uncanny Valley, was an anthology that barely involved the
Walkers at all. There were even plans for a 10th anniversary movie,
but it was cancelled after everyone jumped ship. (More on that later.)
After To Boldly Flee,
things were a bit rocky, but everyone soldiered on. Although the Nostalgia
Critic was no more, Doug Walker began his next big project, a series called Demo Reel. This was to have higher
production value than the Nostalgia Critic, even going so far as to hire actors
and rent a studio. The reception was overwhelmingly negative, and after six
months, the show was cancelled, and the Nostalgia Critic was brought back to
life. But not wanting to let all the money they spent on production go to
waste, the revival involved more skits, and everything was shot within the
studio. (Fun fact: their studio is a small warehouse that they never bothered
to sound dampen, so all current NC videos are shot in what is essentially the
office and break room.)
This was around the time that Allison Pregler and Holly
Brown were let go by the company, and a few other members like Lindsay Ellis
and Kyle Kallgren had also left of their own volition. Afterwards, a slew of
new content creators were brought in to fill in the gaps. I remember during
this exodus is when accusations against the site first began to surface. Many of them were
dismissed as them just being salty that they were let go, especially since they
were latched on to by rather dubious groups like the various Chan sites, but
the consensus was that Mike Michaud was to the root cause of most of their
problems, and no good could come as long as he was still around.
Doug and company also raised funds through IndieGoGo for a
game show around this time. The production was so haphazard and mismanaged that
IndieGoGo threatened investigations. Only twelve of a promised forty episodes
were released, and the final product is seen by many as an embarrassment that
everyone involved with is ashamed of. According to the document, the game show,
along with a planned spin-off site called Barfiesta, were all Mike’s ideas that
no one wanted any part of.
After 2015, things were pretty quiet for a while. Channel
Awesome kept on trucking, and the producers who had left the site found freedom
and success on YouTube. Around this time, Blip was bought by Maker Studios and
shut down by the end of the year. Most of the people on Blip had moved their
content to YouTube, and by 2016, nearly everyone on CA had their own YouTube
channel.
Cut to March 13th, 2018 when Allison Pregler
broke the silence. After being asked about one of Doug’s videos on Twitter, she
went on a long tirade about her time there and CA’s many transgressions. Former
members like Linkara, Kaylyn “Marzgurl” Saucedo, Lindsay Ellis and more joined
the conversation. As the conversation grew and grew and began branching out
into different threads, things became hard to keep track of. To remedy this and
finally get everyone’s grievances out in the open, a Google Doc was compiled
and released to the public on April 2nd. It clocked in at 69 pages
and included testimonies from 20 former producers. (It has since been expanded
to 73 pages as two more contributors were added.) An
abridged version was also released boiling the document down to 11 major
points, including Mike Michaud’s history of being “unprofessional, aggressive,
immature, difficult and misogynistic”, Doug Walker making sweeping decisions
that drastically changed the course of the
site despite not being in a managerial role, negligence, incompetence,
poor communication, and little to no effort to fix any problems addressed. A
few former producers, some of whom contributed to the document, some of whom
didn’t, also released vlogs detailing their own experience, which you can find here, here, here, here, and here. The
main document spread like wildfire, and since its publication, over thirty
producers, some who’ve been with the site from the very beginning, fled en masse.
In less than two weeks, they went from having over thirty producers on their site
to just two, one of which is only there out of sheer loyalty, the other is only
there simply just to troll them. (Update: all of the producers are now officially gone.)
So how did Channel Awesome respond to this? In the worst way
possible. First they posted the above statement on Twitter, which included such
gems as “For the people who have spoken out about past instances they deemed
hurtful, or unprofessional, we sincerely regret you feel that way”, “Criticism
that isn’t a means to a productive end does little for either the party
criticizing or those in the line of fire”, and my personal favorite, “We thank
our content creators, team, and fans for truly making our Channel Awesome”. Needless
to say, nobody was buying it. It’s been ridiculed by everyone on
#ChangeTheChannel, and all it did was draw even more attention to the
controversy. After this statement was released, the hemorrhaging of members increased.
But not satisfied with shooting themselves in just one foot,
Channel Awesome went on the offensive and released another response on their
website on April 11th. This “response” basically denied any
responsibility or wrongdoing, deflected blame on the victims, called out
certain producers (all female) by name, used an out-of-context clip as “proof”
that they were lying, and released a chat log that hinted at the identity of
someone on the document that wished to remain anonymous. That last one is an especially
low blow because she detailed an encounter with a former producer who was
sexually grooming her and other underaged fans, claiming the management knew
about it and didn’t act for a year. Her identity as of now is still unknown,
but through some detective work, some people found out that the
sexual deviant in question was Justin “JewWario” Carmichal, a highly beloved member of
the community who committed suicide in 2014. Holly Brown and a few others admit
that this was all true. For many, this bombshell is the most devastating part of
the whole spectacle.
And that brings us up to the present. The only question left
is what the future holds in store for this company? If you ask me, I see them
going under by the end of the year or reworking their business model to focus
exclusively on the core Chicago crew, which is clearly what they were really
interested in from the beginning. But considering that Mike Michaud has proven
to be incapable of change or admitting past mistakes, it’s most likely going to
be the latter. As for Doug, I don’t see his career suffering much from this. If
PewDiePie, JonTron and Logan Paul can walk away from career destroying scandal
virtually unscathed, I don’t see why those still loyal to him wouldn’t follow
should he decide to branch off on his own. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to
be an option.
Now I know what you’re thinking: Mike Michaud seems to be
the root of 99% of the company’s problems, so why don’t the Walkers just kick
him to the curb and continue doing the Nostalgia Critic on their own? The thing
is, they can’t. Mike Michaud owns the intellectual rights to the Nostalgia
Critic, or at the very least is a majority shareholder. If the Walkers leave,
they lose their flagship show, and Doug is probably scared shitless of trying
anything new after the failure of Demo
Reel showed that screaming and referencing other movies is his only trick.
Likewise, the Nostalgia Critic is Mike’s biggest cash cow, so he must be doing
everything in his power to keep him in his pocket. Although at this point, I
wouldn’t put it above Mike to continue the Nostalgia Critic with a new guy in
the role should he decide to leave. Personally, I don’t know what Michaud’s
goal was with that response. At this point, he seems to just be violently
lashing out at the darkness.
It is a bit hard to gauge how much of this Doug was in on
since he’s not in a managerial position, but it’s been clear from the beginning
that his solution to these kinds of things is to bury his head in the sand and
let Rob and Mike do all the dirty work. However, rumors have circulated that
Doug and Rob are speaking with a lawyer, but for now they are just that:
rumors. And even if they are true, it’s not entirely certain if they’re looking
for a way to get rid of Mike, or if they’re doubling down and looking to get
litigious with the creators of the document. Only time will tell.
Thus ends the cautionary tale of the rise and fall of Channel Awesome, a company
ran by an idiot savant and a heartless sociopath who managed to build a cottage
industry that lasted a decade despite not knowing what the hell they were
doing, went out of the way to burn every bridge they could, tried to put out
their fires with napalm, and became the center of one of the most
embarrassingly catastrophic PR disasters in recent memory. They got to where
they are simply by being at the right place at the right time, but if they
played their cards right, I believe they could’ve been an incredibly successful
company. Regardless, I and many others live in a house that Doug and company
helped build, a place that holds a lot of great memories I wouldn’t trade for
the world and lead me where I am today, which is why it’s all the more
heartbreaking to see them take a sledgehammer to its walls. The tragic thing
about this is that it all could’ve been easily avoided. Everyone at Channel
Awesome wanted something different out of this, but the one thing they all wanted was
a simple, earnest apology. If they did that and made a concerted effort to
improve, it wouldn’t have escalated to this point. But since they were hellbent
on not admitting their faults, they pissed away whatever goodwill they had left
with them, their fans and their community. Hopefully things will get better
before they get worse, but honestly, I don’t see things getting any worse than
they are right now.
If there's anything to take away from all this, let it be this: if you're going to start a business, treat your employees with respect. If you wrong someone, apologize and do better next time. And if you don't know how to do something, HIRE SOMEONE WHO FUCKING DOES.
If you wish to support your favorite former Channel Awesome
contributors, there’s a
handy chart where you can find their YouTube pages, Twitter profiles and
Patreon accounts.
#ChangeTheChannel
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