Gregory's Server@pluralistic when this happened, they took $500 million of VC money at insane rates, moved all resources from making scrappy docs for the internet that people loved, focused on super expensive and long long lead time things for a TV channel their audience didn’t have and that was barely on any homes in the US, and lost all of the momentum their brands had built online, where the audience was
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@pluralistic they burned through all this money, put most of our video staff on TV, spent way less on documentaries for the internet, and THEN they sort of did the “pivot to video” on socials where we got money from FB, Verizon, Snapchat, etc, to “fund” the videos for YouTube. So then the “digital” operation (us) ended up publishing a bunch of weird Facebook lives and things we made for much less $$ than the documentaries people originally came to us for @pluralistic so then the digital audience, which was used to 30 minute docs about, like, whale cullings in the Faroe Islands, was being fed studio shows that were cheap to make. Everyone did the best with what we could but often the response from an audience that expected long form doc was “fuck you, what is this?” @pluralistic the TV channel made good stuff but no one could watch it, it didn’t go onto the internet in any coherent way, the internet stuff was less funded so it wasn’t as good or the good ideas were stolen for TV, they had massive investors who wanted a return on the TV network no one wanted, they took more money more debt gave up more control to TV and VC execs or people from that world and entered a death spiral. The TV network and investments associated with it fucked *everything* @pluralistic they kept throwing money at this TV problem forever. When Vox and other digital media companies started making shows for Netflix, VICE at first did not even want to do this because they “owned a tv channel” @pluralistic which brings me back to your thread and your point. We had a loyal audience and literally had a subscription magazine. We were making documentaries that were winning awards and making money at a ridiculously low cost. What if instead of launching a tv channel at the most obviously stupid time they launched their *own* streaming network? Starting with their already existing base of paying subscribers! or if they simply decided to NOT light hundreds of millions of $$ on fire?  @jasonkoebler @pluralistic This is fascinating on multiple levels. If you squint, you can kinda see a rationale that says "we're too reliant on YT for distribution," which considering the time frame is a very insightful observation. But... a cable TV channel? That's a very VC decision. Like their VC fund got a "sweet deal" on a cable channel and synergy!  @tob @jasonkoebler @pluralistic I think they honestly would have been better served by doing what companies like Collegehumor/Dropout, LTT, etc did and creating their _own_ subscription platform for their longform content. Everything VC’s touch, dies. If you work for a VC funded business, you don't work for a founder, you work for scam artist. If you work for a VC funded business, you don't have customers, you have victims. If you work for a VC funded business, you don’t have a future, you are less than 90 days from unemployment. |
@pluralistic I started at vice maybe two years before this. Motherboard specifically went from making 4-5 30-minute, in the field documentaries that got millions of views and were beloved to hiring a bunch of people to make a TV pilot. I think they spent $2 million hiring people to make and shoot four episodes of a tv show that executives hated (but was objectively good, and would have done well on YT), that they literally threw in the trash and never aired anywhere