Steven Crowder responds to Daily Wire: It was never about the money
(www.youtube.com)
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Not only do other conservative media companies pull this crap, but it's standard in the entertainment industry in general. Machinima had such blatantly awful contracts that I don't feel sympathy for talent that negligently took shitty offers, but it's depressing how much Machinima hamstrung the golden age of Youtube content.
This sad state of affairs happened because hardware infrastructure costs were astronomical in the mid aughts, forcing the founders to take venture capital and/or get acquired. Once the non-founder MBA types are in charge, there was no hope for a back-boned owner to call the advertising hacks on their bluff, and get a better deal for Youtube and the content creators.
Edit: Examples from RTvee about other political media.
A lot of the DW people who are commenting on this keep saying something along the lines of “this was the opening offer, you are supposed to negotiate….and he was your friend why did you record him?”
Well friends do not offer friends incredibly low and stupid contracts as a starting point…. And why not record a phone call you intend to talk business on?
Trust but verify, especially after all the publicized incidents of conservative grifters and lapses in judgement. And as you said, anyone that gets personally offended over recording legal business negotiations would make a very stupid and undependable business partner. Granted Daily Wire is being coldly methodological, as opposed to drama vortexes like Milo.
The damning part was that there was resistance on DW's side to the Crowders suggestion that the contract was out-of-touch and excessive with the brand and likeness in perpituity, and that up-and-coming talent should mentored. Reminds me of Steve Job's demeanor towards John Carmack. There wasn't a strong, explicit acknowledgement that the initial proposed contract was intended as a template instead of suggestion of leverage. Shapiro explained going into business with Boreing because some dinosaurs (probably Koch Brothers or Murdoch) were clueless regarding online mediums and younger audiences. DW isn't as stodgy and disconnected as legacy companies, but it's a shame they have the same top-down attitude that I presume was part of Shapiro's criticism.
In business it's okay to have a rider, like Van Halen's brown M&M clause, to make sure the other party is experienced and attentive to the venture. A shady example I've heard about personally is a independent owned establishment getting a contract from a management company that has the MC's revenue or profit share claimed before taxes, which wouldn't require MC to actually make net profit for the owners. Said management company (Destination Hotels, 5+ years ago) was being underhanded and subtle (hospitality is by and large a grimey, uninspired industry), while these indie networks are just strong-arming the desperate and impulsive.
I would lump Candace Owens reaction as a drama vortex. She seamed unhinged and went very personal very quickly which is funny considering Steven started this off without naming anyone. And even after the attacks he has said nice things about Klaven, Peterson, and Shapiro. Doesn’t matter that people speculated it was them it could just as well had been fox, tpusa, oan, newsmax, etc.
And their resistance appears to be what crowder has a problem with. Sure with unknown talent there are risks. But crowder really isn’t an unknown. They were willing to put up 50 mil over 4 years for him and he had a subscriber base a third of the size of their whole network. And they are worried about being demonetized on YouTube despite the ad reads and subs being like 95% of the income. And that would go for the younger talent Crowder was voicing concern over getting that same crap deal.
And Rekeita has pointed out on his live stream that sure you give an offer lower than what you expect to agree to when negotiating but you don’t go so low you insult the person you are offering it to. That kills any chance of them doing business together and kind of makes you wonder if it was even a serious offer in the first place.
We all knew about Candace since before KIA2 was active, but a normie coming across one of her clips shared on Facebook doesn't stand a chance. For clarity, I referring to Shapiro and Boreing (and any private investors I'm unaware of) when I said Daily Wire, not any of their other hosts or writers.
Daily Wire the business became suspect when Ben had blinders regarding the military industrial complex, promoted the vaccine (so I've heard, haven't listened for more than 4 minutes since May 2020), and provided risk-averse coverage of the presidential election and Jan 6; this recent event is just dramatic evidence. Similarly, every everyday Joe should have been outraged about potential govt. surveillance abuse before Assange and Snowden were breaking news, before the Patriot Act was a possibility.