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Now, this may come across as something like this:

But let me tell you my story.

Back around 4 years or so ago I stopped watching TGWTG, of which I had been a big fan of then; I can't quite remember the exact reason, but I believe that it had to do with something about slowing content. Anyways, I stopped going and quite honestly, didn't look back. Sure I occasionally watched Spoony's or Cinema Snob's videos (and was vaguely aware of some controversies/conflict around Spoony) but over time, even those dried up and I never looked any further.

Flash forward to the present day and suddenly I stumble upon the seeming train wreck it and the people associated with it have become; in particular Spoony. Floods of behind the scenes drama, allegations, and rumors of personalities brewing out of control swamped me in an excess of information.

So tell me. As someone rather confused, and just outright curious as to what had happened to the people I had once admired. Could you set me straight, with things as close to the facts as they can be about TGWTG's apparent long over self destruction?

Piss poor management and coordination probably had to do with it. The whole site of tgwtg stopped hosting a lot of popular people when they didn't support the people taking part in it. Everyone managed their own sites and contents better and could get more revenue from it, so they just went that route and left tgwtg with the third tier talent. Youtube also killed off tgwtg, by rendering it and other similar video hosting sites completely redundant. Most of the content for tgwtg is uploadrd to channel awesome on youtube now. The whole thing was a tale about the cutting edge becoming redundant and failing to adapt to changing tastes and times.

From what I can gather, Doug Walker is just tired of doing Nostalgia Critic videos. He tried stopping a few years ago and replaced it with Demo Reel, which just wasn't funny. After that, he went back to what viewers wanted. Nostalgia Critic videos are still good, but get too wrapped up in storylines and side characters. That being said, I like Doug Walker's editorial videos.

The only content producer I still watch regularly is Todd in the Shadows. All his videos are on YouTube, but they are heavily edited for time. Now that Blip has gone under, I hope he'll start uploading his full videos.

Spoony? That shit's ancient history. (In Internet time, anyway.) There are three events that you really need to be aware of?
1. Rebranding as channelawesome.com, because… the Walkers wanted a new site, I guess. Other than (as far as I know) a concieniant way to quickly scan through all of a producer's videos- which, I should mention, can easily be found elsewhere- I haven't had any problems. Then again, I've only been on the forums once, and other than that have only seen the main page and individual videos.
2. The Lupa/Phelous dibaccle. Some really horrible communication and the actions of a (at least to my eye) scumbag behind the scenes at the company led to two of the most popular producers to leave- the former being fired, and the latter (her boyfriend at the time, and possibly still today, I don't know) leaving in protest. Bad blood, indeed. But from reading the accounts, the guy I just mentioned is the only person I really hold it against. Unfortunately, he's been the brothers' really good friend for years, and you know how that works.
3. Blip shutting down a few days ago. Or course totally out of their control. But still, it's been a clusterfuck of mass embed replacing and Youtube promptly shitting its pants upon all these copyrighted-materials-heavy videos being posted.

Well, about #2, I'm sorry but your wording has me a little confused.

So is the "scumbag" Lupa, Phelous, or some other third party that made things worse? And if you don't mind me asking, what was the communication issue? I know of Spoony's incident with the off-color joke, but I don't know about this one.

And finally, as for Spoony. Yeah, I know that he got in hot water for what he said; but even then it just feels like he slowly devolved into a wreck. I know he has Bipolar, but he really seems to have completely changed; hell I remember when I watched his shit for hours. Ripping apart Final Fantasy VIII and X, REB BROWN, S.W.A.T, his Twilight v-reviews, and the entire Ultima series review.

I just want that guy back. Not the angry, hostile, depressed shell that's left.

"behind the scenes at the company"
If I remember correctly (though I honestly don't feel like looking it up), the guy's the CEO of Channel Awesome, and has been since its inception. He hasn't appeared in front of a camera in years.

Poor management from Mike Michaud, plus hes an asshole to the content creators.
I had the displeasure of speaking to him years ago, he came off as unprofessional and hostile.

One of the first things i remember that indicated poor management, was the site itself.
They had to manually approve any blog post as a way of working around the bot spammers making blog advertisements. This pissed off the bloggers on the site, as it took forever for their blog to be manually approved for posting. Would have been better if they got a new site early, one that wasn't so broken.

The moderators for the site were also content creators, so they weren't into discussing anything and would just lay down the ban hammer (Even though the site was broke and bans didn't work.)

I forget the name of it, but they made a gaming site and pushed a lot of the content creators to that site, of course it died and stunted many of the content creators views. Might as well just let them go, it would have been the same fate.

Michaud was apparently hard to get in touch with, but god help you if you weren't there when he needed to talk to you. Lupa learned that the hard way.

Then you have the man himself, Doug. As years went on people grew out of his humor, and were not on board for his skits. When the show runner isn't bringing in the views, everyone else gets that much less publicity. People would much rather watch Game Grumps or practically anyone else but Doug as this point, even Team Four Star stopped being an affiliate of the site.

Solid Mike wrote:

I forget the name of it, but they made a gaming site and pushed a lot of the content creators to that site, of course it died and stunted many of the content creators views. Might as well just let them go, it would have been the same fate.

I believe it was called Blistered Thumbs? Boy, did that die basically as soon as it started

To be accurate, it existed for about three years and two months. I don't know what exactly you'd call that, but I think that's kind of a harsh way of putting it.

@Solid Mike
What exactly gives you the idea that the NC is suffering in terms of popularity? I've seen nothing to indicate that.

It's clear to see hes not as watched as he was in the past, viewership numbers are down.
Of course he still has a fan base, mainly on Facebook, but it's not like it once was.

From what i remember, the casual posters on the CA forum admitted they gave up on watching Doug and have become fans of Brad, mainly. My own personal friends whom used to watch him, along with random people that i come by on the net all echo the same thing: He's not funny anymore, and his skits are cringeworthy.

My own personal feelings are actually different, i don't mind the skits, i just don't care about the movies he has been reviewing. Theres no draw for me to watch his content anymore.

But what do you actually have as proof other than anecdotal evidence of some people who've stopped watching him? Literally every content producer has viewers who drop off for this that or the other reason- they also have newcomers as well. Hell, if I didn't like Brad's personality and only enjoyed that of the Snob character, I'd have probably stopped watching those videos a while ago, as it's pretty obvious he doesn't give much of a damn about that anymore.

Well as i said, the numbers speak for themselves. Those of us that were fans years ago know hes not as big as he used to be. It takes the Nerd and his Michael Bay TMNT review to break a million views now. But you seem to be salty over someone suggesting he's not as popular as he used to be, so I'll leave it at that.

Well as i said, the numbers speak for themselves. Those of us that were fans years ago know hes not as big as he used to be. It takes the Nerd and his Michael Bay TMNT review to break a million views now.

I think he's just confused because the numbers say otherwise. His popularity doesn't appear to have waned when he's still reliably bringing in 600,000-1,000,000+ views…

People would much rather watch Game Grumps or practically anyone else but Doug as this point,

…which is FAR more than any game grumps video on average.

What gets me "salty" is people who act like they just know something without any solid factual basis behind it. The information on how many early views his old videos got is not easy to get, if even possible at all. And now, unlike before, he's hosting them in two different places.

Granted some of his videos have a lot of views, but that's over time.
Game Grumps seems to pull views at 400k~800k per video, over a very short amount of time.

View count wasn't hard to come by, considering YouTube was always his biggest viewership.
The answer to this thread is poor management, and the NC not being as popular as he once was.

Diehard NC fans do tend to be difficult.

"YouTube was always his biggest viewership."

Uh… what? Dude, Doug left YouTube in 2008 for tgwtg.com after a bunch of copyright takedowns, and he didn't officially upload NC episodes there until after the revival, five years later. You have yet to show any solid evidence of that series' popularity dropping, and now you're resorting to ad hominems.

And about Game Grumps- in that "very short amount of time", their uploads get a push of about two to three hundred thousand views. After that, some continue to rise at a fairly significant rate, but the large majority do not. Their success has much more to do with their upload schedule being practically designed to exploit Youtube's ad algorithm (as they've mentioned before).

I don't really have any problems with NC, in the past he would review films I really didn't have interest in just as he does now, and while I thought adding sketches was tiring at first, I've gotten used to them. But still, Paw has put a hold on Music Movies, and Todd also started Cinnemaddona which prevents him from doing more song reviews than I'd like to see (also I'm mad at him for not putting "Come with Me Now" on his top 10 best of 2014, it seems he didn't know it even existed since he said the hardest rocking song of the year was "Ain't it Fun").

Adam DeLand wrote:

(also I’m mad at him for not putting “Come with Me Now” on his top 10 best of 2014, it seems he didn’t know it even existed since he said the hardest rocking song of the year was “Ain’t it Fun”).

Did that song even qualify in the top 10 by making it into the Billboard top 20? Honest question. I don't remember it playing on any of the pop/top 40 stations (which I actually do somewhat pay attention to) and it just kinda played out its course on rock stations.

It made the year-end list for 2014, and that's what he based his selections on. He also started including songs that didn't make the year-end but did make the top 20. I do in fact remember hearing it on pop stations, I think maybe on SiriusXM Hits 1, though it could've also been The Pulse or The Blend.

Also I should mention that I was really mad when he would put some of my favorite rock songs in his worst list. First he included "Too Close" as an honorable mention for 2012, then he put "My Songs Know What They Did in the Dark (Light 'Em Up) at number 8 for 2013 (which did land him some criticism from fans), and then for 2014 he had "Take Me to Church" as an honorable mention, saying he doesn't understand how anyone could like the song. What the hell is wrong with you, Todd?

For what it's worth, I met Doug Walker at a con once and he was really nice. Most guests I meet at cons are nice, but him more than most. I somehow doubt he's the bad guy in this situation.

I guess you're gonna be mad at me too, cus the only song I like in the list of songs you named is My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark, and even then it's one of the weaker songs from my favorite band. Too Close was meh (got sick of it real fast) and I absolutely hate Take Me to Church. I'm with Todd, I just don't get it. Although call me weird, but I like it more when I disagree with him than when I agree with him. I like that he keeps it real, doesn't change his opinion to whatever is popular to say.

Why am I making this a Todd discussion thread? I'm terrible.

@Farm Zombie:
As much as I do think the managing of Channel Awesome is bad, I don't think Doug is very much to blame. I imagine he mostly just makes the content for his multiple shows/blogs and leaves the actual managing to his brother and his allegedly jerkfaced friend that we mentioned before. It's possible that Doug is aware of the problems but feels too in over his head, he does have a lot on his plate to begin with

@0.9999…=1 Doug and other video producers all stated, Blip was a safe place to upload, but YouTube was the bigger audience by far. Plus its better to promote your videos on YT.

No, Doug isnt the bad guy here. But the Walkers should just buy CA from Michaud.

I guess I have to repeat myself: Doug did not have an official Youtube account for five years. Other than what basically amounts to advertising, they've gotten nothing from all the unofficial uploads during that time.

That doesn't matter, what he uploads now allows us to gauge his view count.

Wha… are you serious? Wasn't this about you claiming that he's less popular now than before?

That's no claim, when we can gauge his view count. You seem confused about something.

I'll hazard a guess and assume you mean he is super popular now, and was just as popular before his YT channel. The NC was a big deal years ago, but not so much now.

I'm confused? You just said that not having real figures on the kind of view counts old NC videos used to get "doesn't matter" when that's exactly what we're talking about. Jesus Christ, it's like arguing with a rock…
But you are right about one thing- he's not a sensation anymore. He's become much more of a staple. Being around for the better part of a decade will tend to do that. Same with Linkara, and especially the AVGN, who's technically already surpassed a decade.

Oh, that whole YT channel statement you made was about not knowing exactly what his view count back then was..? Yeah, that doesn't matter, it's clear he was pulling in many more views years ago. PeanutButterGamer and Jon Tron were TGWTG content producers back then, he had the Nerd bump, and he was reviewing nostalgic movies people really wanted to see reviewed.

Safe to say, he was doing a lot better back then.

here is a little run down of the shitfest that was blisthered thumbs"

IMO, I hate what the Nostalgia Critic is doing right now. Some of his reviews contain sketches that drag on for way too long, and while I like his editorials, I hate his movie reviews. A lot of what he's reviewing now are movies that are still in theaters that Doug personally has gripes with (Pixels, Jurassic World, Jupiter Ascending, and today's review, which was Mad Max Fury Road. Seriously?) I wish he would just stop making reviews because it seems like he's running out of ideas.

I don't like it, so shut it down! Nobody gets to see it!

…

Seriously, do you realize what you're saying?

It's not too far off from what Doug did before. He took a break and stopped doing reviews because he felt like it had run its course. Quite frankly, after watching today's video I kind of agree. The Fury Road review was all over the place and had a ton of weak jokes and even weaker review points (claims Thunderdome is engaging for the memorable lines and characters and completely ignores that for Fury Road when he JUST quoted all the memorable lines, devotes an entire review to how 'well it wasn't THAT great' when he clearly loves the film, thinks higher aggregate scores mean people overall think the film is better than other films) and the "meninist" joke was pure cringe.

Midnight said he "wished" Doug would quit making reviews because there is a perceived drop in quality here, and I'm starting to agree. It may just be a summer slump or something but taking a break or something might be good for the series as a whole to "freshen up" or something.

Do you realize that you're exaggerating what he actually said?

It's not an uncommon or controversial thing to say you wish something would just end/get cancelled when you used to like it but it's just decreased in quality. How many times have you heard people say they wish the Simpsons was cancelled? Shit, man, Doug said exactly that in an NC review, and yet I don't see you acting like he's a nazi that wants to control what people watch.

Doug Walker is doing better work in his editorials. I wouldn't be sad to see the Nosalgia Critic reviews end. The Osmosis Jones video was pretty confusing. The whole gimick revoloved around the idea that Inside Outside out ripped off Osmosis Jones, but…no. I mean, who was even saying that?

I disagree with it no matter who says it or what they're saying it about. I think it's a really bad attitude to have about entertainment, unless essentially everyone agrees that a series has decomposed to stale garbage, which is pretty damn rare. The fact that I snapped at the guy for being (in my opinion) a bit obnoxious doesn't mean I literally think he wants to be a video fascist.
And no, Doug isn't immune from saying shit that I'm not a fan of by any stretch of the imagination.