When internet culture was still developing, Channel Awesome was one of the places to go for pop culture criticism. It celebrated the nerdy-ness of being a fan, and yet was one of the pioneers of a detached mode of analyzing those properties while extolling them at the same time.
"YouTube had a lot of issues with copyright content and you couldn't fight it that well, and it was a lot more difficult to get yourself out there and make a living that way, so we were on blip.tv, which wasn't a really good place to search for videos," said Allison Pregler, a critic known as Obscurus Lupa who specializes in poking fun at "Z-grade movies" and used to be featured on Channel Awesome.
Blip.tv, a video platform created for the purpose of helping producers of independent web series promote their content, was simply not ideal for helping fans discover content creators that shared their interests.
That's where Channel Awesome fit in. Founded in 2008 by Mike Michaud, Mike Ellis and Bhargav Dronamraju, it was known as That Guy With The Glasses (TGWTG) until 2014 because its star — and consequently its chief draw — was a comedian known as Doug Walker, whose bespectacled alter-ego The Nostalgia Critic used a Looney Tunes-esque style of comedy to assess whether beloved nostalgic movies and TV shows were really as wonderful as millennials liked to remember.
Over the next few years, Channel Awesome seemed to embody some of the biggest themes of the modern generation — substandard working conditions, being paid for content vs. giving it away as "exposure," and even allegations that would seem all too familiar in the #MeToo era.
As the Nostalgia Critic became more popular, TGWTG invited other talented online critics to join their platform, turning it into one of the most popular content aggregators on the internet. Walker had found a clever angle to use for a character, at least in terms of putting himself in dialogue with his cultural zeitgeist, and he filled the role perfectly. By the time it changed its name to Channel Awesome in 2014, the moniker seemed a perfect fit to describe a venue where any nerd could find critics for their favorite (or most hated) movies, TV shows, video games, comic books, songs and other pop culture properties. In the process, it turned dozens of nerdy millennials — people who had been armed with nothing more than a webcam, an internet connection and a ton of opinions — into minor celebrities.
"We were all starstruck by each other," Kaylyn Saucedo ("MarzGurl") told Salon. "Not just by Doug or by James Rolfe [the Angry Video Game Nerd] being there in the room with us, but with each other. We loved being with each other. And that was the best thing about being with Channel Awesome on a whole: the other producers. The other producers were great!"
Yet starting late last year and continuing through the early weeks of April, Channel Awesome's reputation took a massive and very public hit. YouTube made it easier for content creators to make a living without Channel Awesome, while many of its top content creators opened up about how the site's management wasn't creating a welcoming work environment for them.
Those complaints, which were outlined in a 73-page Google Doc that contained negative accounts from more than a dozen former employees, describe a corporate culture that could best be described as toxic and unprofessional. It singled out "management" — namely, Michaud, Walker and his brother Rob — for offenses ranging from poor communication and managerial incompetence to being outright dismissive and bullying toward content creators. And when Channel Awesome's management released a public letter that accused its former contributors of being liars with "vindictive intentions," their main accomplishment was to make #changethechannel star
Among the more notable accusations: Pregler claimed that Channel Awesome management was aware of a sexual harassment problem from former Chief Organizational Officer Mike Ellis, and of a content producer who was grooming female fans and coercing them into sex, but failed to take action for years. She also described a harrowing incident in which Michaud made her cry in a bathroom after aggressively berating her for using mid-roll advertisements (which at that time was necessary for her to sustain a living off her work), with Doug Walker promising to address the matter and then siding with Michaud. Holly Brown, a former administrator at the site, says that she was asked to work every day of the year, and was unexpectedly fired the day after she received surgery without being given a reason and was pressured (at risk of losing her severance pay) into signing a contract that barred her from working in the industry for three years. She later described their actions as "ruining" her career for years.
Then there was the management team's unwillingness to take a strong stand against the harassment and bullying of female contributors during Gamergate.
"I would absolutely use the word 'cowardice,'" Lindsay Ellis (The Nostalgia Chick) said. "He [Mike Michaud] was afraid of alienating a portion of the audience and that is why they were so eager to, in that 2014 era, to ignore what was going on because they considered it bad business. He was pretty insistent that no one talk about it or speak out about what was happening because he considered it bad for business because that would alienate a fairly good-sized portion of their audience."
Pregler described the same thing, telling Salon that although she was fortunate enough to not receive as much misogynistic toxicity as some of the other female contributors, "as far as them protecting the female contributors when things happened like that, they could have made a statement about it. They could have not hired people that supported Gamergate, which is something that they did. Because they didn't want to make a political stance about it, I guess, what they were showing was that they didn't care or supported it. It would have been very easy to just make a statement and draw the line somewhere, and they didn't."
As Ellis noted, "The way they look at approaching an atmosphere of misogyny is like swatting bad players like flies instead of the way you cultivate online communities. And part of that is speaking out against toxicity online, because otherwise you're complicit."
In the Google Doc, Ellis described that she and fellow contributor Lewis Lovhaug ("Linkara") were pressured into performing a rape joke for one of the site's crossover specials, despite their objections. Those annual crossover specials — essentially multi-hour miniseries in which the site's numerous stars would appear together in tongue-in-cheek comedy-adventures (full of pop culture references, of course) — were also singled out in the document, with complaints that people worked in substandard conditions, dealt with technical incompetence and weren't paid.
That last theme — not being paid — was a recurring one in the Google Doc. Over and over again, contributors talked about various ways in which Channel Awesome management did not pay them, from implementing seemingly arbitrary rules that cut into their revenue to insisting that having their videos featured on the site was their main form of compensation because they were receiving exposure. Channel Awesome management even made decisions that hurt the other creators' bottom line without intending to, such as when Walker decided to retire his Nostalgia Critic character (a decision he later reversed) without notifying many of them in advance.
Which brings up another recurring theme from the Google Doc — Channel Awesome contributors' feeling that, if you weren't part of the management team's inner circle, communication ranged from poor to nonexistent.
"Communication has been an issue and we've admitted to that definitely. And I think as a business for over 10 years, we have made mistakes," Doug Walker told Salon. "We definitely have. And it's something we're always looking to make better and we're always looking to grow and with the people that we work in-house with in studio, I mean, I have yet to hear any complaints. And they always talk about how much fun it is to shoot there and we have yet to hear anything bad, so I hope that means we're improving."
Walker's story on current working conditions at Channel Awesome was reinforced by ongoing employees who spoke with Salon.
"I think it's important to remember that there's always multiple perspectives to every story, to every experience," Malcolm Ray, who plays a number of characters as a sidekick to the Nostalgia Critic, told Salon. "And that's not to invalidate anyone else's experience, because the only perspectives that we have are our own. And I gotta say that the things in that document do not reflect the current atmosphere or the current work environment that I have working with the Nostalgia Critic crew and Channel Awesome. It's always been very professional, very fun, very easy-going. And coming from a SAG [Screen Actors Guild] actor — I'm part of SAG, I've worked in the industry — this is one of the smoothest-run projects that I have ever been on. It's practically a cake walk in comparison to other professional sets I've been on."
"I love those guys so much," Tamara Chambers, who also plays a number of characters as a sidekick to Walker, added. "They are some of my best friends now. I love them. They're great guys."
This sense of family, that all of the video critics featured on Channel Awesome were close friends in real life, was baked into the site's brand. That's why the annual crossover specials, as well as the frequent crossover videos between different critics on the site, were so popular. They reinforced the notion that Channel Awesome was more than a sterile search engine, but was instead a warm and welcoming community not unlike the ones that fans would develop with their real-life friends when discussing pop culture products.
"Their biggest asset as a brand was this sort of focus on community and it made the viewer feel that these were your buddies and you'd talk about nerdy things that you'd talk about with your buddies," Ellis said.
Other contributors told the same story: How they were drawn to TGWTG/Channel Awesome not just because it would give them a larger audience, but because the brand was associated with a sense of community, one that they aspired to be a part of. And most of them agreed that, aside from the management team, that community was very real and quite rewarding.
"In a lot of ways we were very much a family. I would say that it was well-known that there were cliques and there were sort of different tiers of producers, but it was very much a family sort of environment that we had," Holly Brown said.
Ellis had a similar observation. "It [the sense of family] was quite genuine. I think it was more of a show for the Walkers and I'm not just saying that because of the controversy. They kind of kept to themselves and they will tell you this. They didn't really — while they were obviously friends with people like Brad Jones [The Cinema Snob] and Lewis Lovhaug — they didn't really engage on a friend level outside of business collaboration."
She added, "But for everyone else it was pretty genuine."
In the end, that sense of family wasn't enough to make content creators overlook their own economic needs. Although blip.tv went under, YouTube made it easier for online critics to monetize their work and ward off frivolous copyright infringement claims from the subjects of their critiques. This, combined with the growth of Patreon as a place where online critics could receive donations to continue their work, made creators less dependent on Channel Awesome — and thus less likely to put up with behavior that they would have tolerated when economic conditions made them more vulnerable.
"We were all brought on in 2008 and 2009 when, you know, the economy crashed," Ellis said. "I had just been laid off from my only job. It was just a desperate place to be and I think the fact that we were sort of brought in in this time of desperation, this millennial ennui of 'We have no future,' kind of made people a lot more attached to this idea, staying to this thing with brand and staying loyal to this brand."
She added, "And over the years it changed to 'We need to improve this brand,' and then eventually when we realized it was never going to improve, people left one by one."
Now that Channel Awesome has lost all but a handful of its original contributors — now that the family has moved out of its parents' house and decided to stay in touch with one another minus the oversight of their ostensible paterfamilias — what lessons can be learned from the Channel Awesome story?
"I feel as though — had the management of Channel Awesome nurtured us better, it would have done wonders for them too," Saucedo said. "It would been mutually beneficial to both parties, both the producers and the management. If we had had access to everything that we needed, which largely is just communication, really, which we did not have, so if we had had access to that communication and if other kinds of partnerships and relationships had been built up for us, if we had been properly rotated throughout the website and through social media, it wouldn't have to just be the Doug Walker show. You wouldn't have to just rely on one personality."
Pregler offered some sober words of warning for aspiring internet stars like herself — be careful who you trust.
"If you are a content creator and you're trying to join up with, let's say, an MCN [multi-channel network] or an aggregate site or anything like that -- if there are contracts involved, make sure that you read them and you understand them," Pregler said. "If you feel like there's some disrespect involved — it's really difficult to tell someone just break away because other people have other financial situations — but if someone's treating you like that, don't stay because you feel you need to be loyal to them, because often the company is not your friend."
This is one important aspect of Channel Awesome's legacy, and it serves as a cautionary tale to be heeded regardless of whether you side with the management or the producers who have left en masse: Millennials, as a generation raised in an economic climate in which they feel their voices are either not heard or disrespected, aren't going to accept mistreatment quietly.
Because Pregler, Saucedo, Ellis, Brown and so many others have spoken out against what they consider to be poor treatment, they have set a precedent that could be quite salutary if it becomes a trend. They are sending a message to others in their industry that when employers fail to treat their workers decently — when they fail to abide by the basic tenets of that oldest of moral clichés, the Golden Rule — they risk more than losing a couple of "troublemaker" employees here and there. They might wind up being publicly called out, even outright shamed, and as a result suffer from potentially devastating negative publicity.
If more workers do this, maybe we'll one day see a climate where employers who may not be naturally inclined to treat their workers well will do so because they have legitimate fears as to how they will be regarded by the public if they don't.
But Channel Awesome's legacy shouldn't be limited simply to the controversies over how it treated many of its employees. By taking so many obscure people and giving them audiences that ranked in the thousands upon thousands, they facilitated the development of a new type of media, and for this they deserve considerable credit.
The dozens of critics whose work was featured on the site didn't simply create traditional video reviews, the kind of work in which what could have been a written essay is instead spoken directly to the camera. They developed a distinct new art form, a hybrid that blended in-depth pop culture critiques with skits that used comical characters, running gags, bargain-basement visual panache and the occasional personal story to make their commentary entertaining. As their brands developed, they also created personas of their own — sometimes real, sometimes fictional, usually a bit of both — that turned them into recognizable public figures.
This fusion of traditional cultural criticism with performance art was reminiscent of "Mystery Science Theater 3000," but it took that style in a completely different direction. While past critics in the MST3K mode usually tried to focus on being funny, the contributors at Channel Awesome — as well as the numerous websites that have been inspired by them in the years since — aimed to entertain and offer the kind of cultural insights one would expect from traditional critics like Roger Ebert, Gene Siskel and Richard Roeper. Indeed, they were often better at doing both than their print-based and TV-based progenitors, as the flexibility of the online format allowed contributors to create a balance between straightforward criticism and zany comedy that was simply unfeasible in the pre-internet era.
This is why, in the end, it isn't just the individual artists who became prominent because of Channel Awesome who benefited from that site's legacy. Everyone who appreciates good art criticism, and good art, should be thankful that this new and incredibly entertaining type of criticism was able to become popular because of the Channel Awesome platform. It is for that reason that I can write that fans of anime should check out MarzGurl, and fans of cheesy movies should watch the videos of Obscurus Lupa, and pop culture consumers with an academic bent should follow Lindsay Ellis (who no longer goes by the sobriquet Nostalgia Chick). And, of course, there is Doug Walker, still playing the Nostalgia Critic on Channel Awesome and still trying to make people laugh.
"I think it's something where, because people come to the site again to kind of get away from their problems and to laugh and joke and so forth," Walker told Salon. "I mean that can be done with a large community, it can be done with a small community, it can be done with a fan community, it can be done with professionals, it can be done by people starting out. I mean, we didn't go into this for money. I started doing this in my folks' basement. I started off as someone who wasn't professional. And I think that kind of creativity and that need to make people laugh and feel better can come from anywhere."
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