How not to launch a paywall: A Watcher retrospective
*Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg voice* You're gonna blame me because you were the business head of the company and you made a bad business deal with your own company?
Who wants to hear a spooky ghost tale about how to alienate your fans?
What is Watcher?
In 2016, at the height of Buzzfeed’s reign/terror over the YouTube algorithm, the digital behemoth launched the video series, “Buzzfeed Unsolved,” created by Ryan Bergara, hosted by himself and his colleague, Shane Madej. The show was split into two categories, true crime and supernatural, where the duo would discuss the mysteries surrounding various crimes and paranormal events. As the show progressed, they started leaning more into the supernatural side, even venturing out to hunt for ghosts themselves at various haunted locations.
Aside from the series’ popular explanation/video essay format, most of “Unsolved’s” success came from Ryan and Shane themselves. Ryan’s belief that ghosts were real vs. Shane’s steadfast insistence that they weren’t made for a very fun, funny dynamic.
In 2019, Shane, Ryan and another colleague of theirs, Steven Lim, announced that they were leaving Buzzfeed to start their own production company/YouTube channel, called Watcher. There, they created “Unsolved’s” spiritual successor, “Ghost Files,” along with several other video series expanding on their past work at Buzzfeed. Their company grew over time, adding new shows and on-screen faces, although the main draw continued to be Ryan and Shane and “Ghost Files.” In 2024, the production company has 25 employees and almost 2.5 million subscribers on YouTube.
What is this whole paywall sitch?
On Friday, April 19, Ryan, Shane and Steven posted this video titled, “Goodbye YouTube.”
In it, they talked about the creation of Watcher, how much the company has grown, some challenges they’ve faced along the way, and plans for the future. One of those plans was to leave YouTube. They were starting their own site, watchertv.com, where users could watch all of their past and upcoming content for the price of $5.99 per month. They claimed that due to changes in the advertising landscape, and their own creative desires, it was necessary for them to pivot to this new financial model. So just to tl;dr: What used to be a beloved, free YouTube series was now moving to a hard paywalled model, where you would have to make a new account on a new website and pay $6 every month to access their content.
Watcher’s watchers did NOT like that. They did not like it at all! The response was swift: fans were angry, hurt and overwhelmingly opposed to the new payment model.
Why did it go so poorly?
I don’t think I have ever seen a fandom turn on a creator so quickly. Especially for a fandom like Watcher’s — communal, goofy, Gen Zers/young millenials — the vitriol was immediate and overwhelming. There were many compounding reasons for why this announcement did not go over well.
Misreading their audience: Watcher’s audience is primarily young people, in their teens and early 20s, many of which have very little disposable income. Naturally, this was probably the last group of people in the world that would be willing to pay money for something that was previously free.
Streaming fatigue: I can pretty confidently say that every human being alive is tired of signing up for new streaming services. Between Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Spotify, Kindle Unlimited, newspaper subscriptions and more, I think I would rather jump off a cliff than sign up for a new thing that I have to pay for every month. To not only be asking your followers for $6 a month, but also for them to pay you that $6 via a new website that they have to sign up for, rather than through something that they probably already have an account for like YouTube or Patreon, is asking too much. The other reality is that $6 is kind of a lot, especially for a media channel that is currently posting about 4-5 videos per month. They do allude to creating new shows and ramping up their content, but they don’t give any specifics as to what that will really look like. And in comparison, you can sign up for Netflix for $7 a month and have access to thousand of movies and shows. The $6 is not a good deal.
The parasocial relationship: Like most creators, or really any entertainers nowadays, a large part of Watcher’s success was built upon Ryan and Shane’s relationship with the audience. Their lighthearted banter with each other and their viewers created a very close dynamic. Over time this caused Watcher fans (who, reminder, are complete strangers) to (maybe subconsciously) view Ryan and Shane as their friends. So when their “friend” reminds them that their relationship is actually a transaction that requires $6 per month, that shatters the illusion of their relationship. And, well, yeah, that makes people kind of upset.
“Worth It” and other financial optics: I have no idea what the business of Watcher looks like, but for many fans the numbers weren’t adding up. Between merch, Patreon, live shows and advertising, many were lead to believe that the company should have been making enough money to stay afloat.
In particular some fans latched on to the news that Watcher would be reviving Steven’s Buzzfeed “Worth It” series, which involved him comparing cheap to wildly expensive foods. “Worth It” was fun when he was spending Buzzfeed’s money to try $1,000 sushi, but now that that money was coming from the fans instead, it felt wasteful.
The hype: To me personally, this was Watcher’s worst misstep during the announcement rollout. We are talking Bad Marketing Decisions 101 here. Two days before the paywall announcement, they posted the below on their Instagram.
It feels so painfully obvious that I feel stupid actually typing this out, but here we go: Do NOT tease that your media company has something “big” coming, when that “big” thing coming is actually that you’re going to take down all your content and force your followers to pay for something that was previously free. Especially, ESPECIALLY, when you have very little to indicate that what they will be paying for will be any different/better than the former free product. I don’t think that anyone at Watcher could have predicted the level of vitriol that would ensue after the announcement, but surely none of them could have believed that anyone would be actively happy about it?
TW: Me defending companies
As someone who has spent a good amount of time working in media, and knows both how little digital advertising is worth and how much it costs to pay people equitable wages, I understand why Watcher felt compelled to make this business move (booo, tomato, tomato, tomato, yeah I know sorry).
I don’t believe that this choice to hardwall their content was made entirely out of greed, I think that the reasoning they shared was true: they didn’t want to compromise their work for the sake of advertisers and they didn’t want to lay anyone off.
It’s a tough reality that nobody wants to admit, but it costs money to make things. And it costs even more money to pay people fairly to make those things. You can’t lament the rise of AI and clickbait and ads if you simultaneously refuse to pay for the content you consume.
I saw a comment on TikTok, that said something to the likes of “I've been watching every video for the last five years for free, you think I'm going to start paying now??” which I think encapsulates my frustration with the fan response to Watcher. Yes, it feels bad and borderline immoral to be forced to pay for something that used to be free. But on the other hand, you have been consistently consuming and entertained by Watcher for years — I find it insulting if you don’t believe that they should be compensated for that.
Was this $6 hardwall a bad idea? Yes, definitely. Could they scale back some production and restructure their business? Probably. Was some other variation of a hardwall/a pivot away from YouTube both necessary and fair to pay the people at Watcher? Also, yes, probably.
What now?
As with all internet dramas do, our saga comes to an end with a follow-up apology.
As cringey and overdone is the “three guys sitting on a couch addressing their company’s past sins” video, I actually think they did a good job with their followup. It’s short, concise, addresses all the major complaints they received from fans, rolls back their more problematic paywall plans and gives a clear path forward to a more reasonable business model. If they had thought about it more, this really should have been their plan for Watcher 2.0 in the first place, but you live and you learn.
What will become of Watcher?
Despite what I think was a pretty solid apology and implementation of reasonable updates to their new paywall policy, I think that Watcher’s reputation has been irreversibly damaged. For many fans, the illusion of Watcher’s friendly, whimsy content has been shattered, their relationship with the content has changed and it’s become overwhelmingly evident that showing support requires a certain level of transaction. So, sorry I guess??? As I’m writing this I’m like wow this is a real downer lol. Well, good luck to them. Everyone, learn from their mistakes.
(I also have some other ramble-y thoughts about the pitfalls of Watcher, and really all friend/parasocial based content you can listen to below.)