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CollegeHumor did not shut down, from the article itself: “In words that I’m sure are as surreal to read as they are to type, I will soon become the new majorit
by ErikAugust 7y ago
CollegeHumor did not shut down, from the article itself:
“In words that I’m sure are as surreal to read as they are to type, I will soon become the new majority owner of CH Media,” said Reich, a longtime executive at CollegeHumor. “Of course, I can’t keep it going like you’re used to. While we were on the way to becoming profitable, we were nonetheless losing money — and I myself have no money to be able to lose.”
Dropout, its streaming service, will continue for at least the next six months while it churns out content already slated for release, Reich said. The future of CollegeHumor itself, and other humor sites run by the company, are less certain.
“In these six months, I hope to be able to save Dropout, CollegeHumor, Drawfee, Dorkly, and many of our shows,” Reich said. “Some will need to take on bold new creative directions in order to survive.”
The CH Media staff contracted from more than 100 to between five and 10 employees, according to Bloomberg News.
- Waterluvian 7y agoI don't follow. How is that not "shutting down"? It's contracted to life support in order to empty the existing pipeline to minimize losses. Maybe this is a Ship of Theseus kind of thing. They get rid of almost all employees, empty the pipeline, and then retool. What's left of College Humor?
- badloginagain 7y agoI take "shut down" as an immediate stop to all services. Domain doesn't resolve, etc.
- kohtatsu 7y agoI think that's kind of a cynical take on what shutdowns can look like.
- kozhevnikov 7y agoThat's "terminated". This is "sunsetting".
- redisman 7y agoI'd imagine just keeping the videos on YouTube still brings some 6 figures per year of income to someone so no point in deleting those.
- tomnipotent 7y agoCan confirm. I helped run one of the largest flash animation networks in the early 2000's (FlowGo), and after we uploaded the content to YouTube after we shuttered the business it was a very nice passive stream of revenue from over 5 billion impressions between 2008-2014.
- stagger87 7y ago> What's left of College Humor? The company.
- Waterluvian 7y agoAnd the name I guess. That's probably the main asset.
- jjeaff 7y agoI don't think the name carries any value or even brand recognition. But the existing IP would be of value.
- sct202 7y agoYeah with that kind of RIF, they're basically setting themselves up to be purchased for branding/existing content.
- dwild 7y ago> It's contracted to life support in order to empty the existing pipeline to minimize losses. Is it really life support? Or simply, what is always should have been? Do you really need 100 staffs for College Humor? For the production side, sure you may need quite a bit of staff for each individual production, but once a production is done, you no longer need them, but you still have to pay them. How long you'll have to pay them will be mostly based on luck (what are the odds that you can always produce something that require each individual staff qualification...). It makes much more sense to have a minimal team, and then hire on a contractual basis based on the production needs.
- jjeaff 7y agoSeems like a dramatic announcement if this was just a big downsizing. Seems more like a shut down with a few hail Mary moves to try to turn it into a big downsizing.
- dwild 7y ago> Seems like a dramatic announcement if this was just a big downsizing. A dramatic announcement? Their announcement was a few tweets on Sam Reich personnal twitter, which ends with this sentence: Independent comedy lives on -- just now more independent (gulp) than ever before. What's dramatic was all the interpretations from everyone else (which does makes sense to see 90% layoff as something dramatic). This is clearly a shutdown for IAC (though seems like they kept a minority stake, so they probably still have a tiny sliver of hope), but from my interpretation, this is simply a big downsizing for Sam Reich. They got 15m+ total subscribers over a bunch of their channels, that's enough to support a team much bigger than 10 employees (Linus Media Group can support 30 with 10 millions subscribers) and on top of that they got Dropout.
- gowld 7y agoSubscribers is a weak measure because some channels produce one new video a month and some produce a video or more every day that only a portion of subscribers watch.
- ohples 7y agoI think it's more accurate to say CollegeHumor is no longer a going concern.
- jtaillon 7y agoCH is passed on! CH is no more! CH has ceased to be! CH has expired and gone to meet 'is maker!
- ccsnags 7y agoIt’s pining for the fjords.
- tempsy 7y agoI think it will just basically become an archive and net passive ad income, but assume they won’t create any more content
- hexane360 7y agoBTW, Sam Reich also acted in a bunch of CollegeHumor videos (e.g. https://youtu.be/N0ps6HuThMs https://youtu.be/N0ps6HuThMs). Of any executives to have control of the company, Sam seems the most likely to preserve CollegeHumor's style.
- _nedR 7y agoHow can you talk about Sam Reich in CollegeHumour videos in a hacker news thread and not choose "Startup guys" as an example : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4 Looking at it now, this video seems to have been particularly relevant, considering that the company went bankrupt because they trusted a bunch of silicon valley frauds i.e. Facebook..
- eyeinthepyramid 7y agoThe website is gone, it just redirects to a Youtube account. For all intents and purposes, it's shut down.