The Fall of Channel Awesome

Breaking down the Google document which highlighted in detail the issues that producers had with Channel Awesome, it can basically be broken down into two categories. You have the majority of the female producers who experienced some form of discrimination from the management of said company, either through their video contributions being mishandled, or in some cases sexual harassment and apparent attempts to actively demean them on camera for the sake of a production (refer to Lindsey Ellis’ “To Boldly Flee” complaint). The male producers, being category 2, suffered a different form of blatant disrespect; a failure in communication. You can read that here.

Detailing the Problem

Recently Eric Rodriguez, a.k.a. the Blockbuster Buster, took to YouTube and released a video detailing his departure from Channel Awesome, and it boils down to a lack of respect and an absence of communication on the part of Mike Michaud and Channel Awesome management staff. You can watch that here.

Fans of Channel Awesome look forward to anniversary specials and this year was to be the 10th Anniversary, and Eric was included for the first time ever in the cast. He was, as he states, very excited to be a part of this production until he got a very short e-mail stating that the anniversary special had been canceled. That was the extent of the information he got, that it was canceled and that was that. He was understandably upset as he had devoted time out of his own personal schedule to his part of this production, and made a complaint about the issue online.

That’s when the full story came out. He was reached out to by Lewis Lovhaug, aka Linkara, who explained that a lot of affiliates of Channel Awesome were not told why the special was cancelled, including “Angry Joe” Vargas, which is as close as CA has ever come to a legitimate journalist. In all seriousness, Joe Vargas gave Channel Awesome a level of credibility because he was their boots on the ground at conventions and announcement events. The fact that he wasn’t aware of why the special was cancelled says a lot about the mishandling of information. But Linkara knew, because he was paying attention and saw the signs on the wall. The reason the special was cancelled was because twenty five… I’ll type that again for emphasis… 25 producers left in a mass exodus. That consisted of 75 percent of the cast for the special. There’s a difference between a production being cancelled and being obliterated, and what happened here was clearly the latter.

But who is Lewis “Linkara” Lovhaug in the grand scheme of Channel Awesome management? No one; he’s another content producer, one of the longest running producers they had at the time. Yes, he had the time on the books, but he wasn’t a manager, it wasn’t his job to help Mr. Rodriguez out. In fact, when you look into the document and you listen to the various stories about the mishandling of Channel Awesome as a whole, Linkara comes up a lot as the man trying to fix things.

A Complete Breakdown of Structure

When I’m not writing, I am the supervisor for a critical division of a law enforcement agency… that’s how I pay the bills, and I’ve been in a supervisory/management role for about five years. With that experience under my belt, I will tell you that if one of your employees is able to handle the business better than you are, you have a major problem. In fact, you have failed as a manager. When the knee-jerk response of the people under you is to call someone else, someone not even affiliated with the management of your company, then you have a serious problem on your hands and it should be corrected immediately. Clearly in Channel Awesome’s case, it was not corrected. In fact, from all accounts and appearances, it was capitalized on. If Linkara was willing to take time out of his busy schedule to help newer producers create quality content, then it took pressure off of Channel Awesome management by doing their job for them.

So could part of the problem been corrected? Absolutely; by extending their own influence through actual communication with their affiliates, the owners of Channel Awesome could have solidified their network of producers. By hearing out their complaints and taking course-corrective actions or by at least addressing the complaints in a civil and professional manner, they could have resolved a lot of what was detailed in the Google Doc complaints.

This wouldn’t have fixed everything, obviously. Remember, there is a column A on this issue and that is where the women came forward with their complaints and… they were many.

Here is Channel Awesome's response to the document.

This was a bad way to handle it and I’ve already addressed it in an earlier article, but there is now fallout from this response.

I’m going to direct you over to Kaylyn “Marz Girl” Saucedo, who probably expresses the blow-back from the response the best here.

Kaylyn gets everything right here and this all feeds back into the mishandling of producers by management. By clicking on the link above you will be directed to a lot of videos made by other former Channel Awesome affiliates and each of them will tell their own story better than I could. Now, one of the things I did bring up about all of this was, “What does Doug Walker say about it?”

Silence of the Nostalgia Critic

There are a few videos floating around online that you can easily find that strongly suggest that Doug Walker, a.k.a. the Nostalgia Critic and the mascot of Channel Awesome, has left them behind. This is, at the moment, a rumor, and I don’t normally talk about rumors, but there is evidence to support it. The first bit is his personal Facebook profile (not the one with him dressed as the Nostalgia Critic) that reads “Worked at Channel Awesome,” implying he’s no longer employed there. That’s pretty strong evidence right there. Refuting that evidence is a Nostalgia Critic episode released this week which has the NC talking about Fivel Goes West. Critics of the rumor say this shows he’s still with them… except that it doesn’t.

The Google Document linked all the way at the top of this article clearly states that Doug Walker was an employee there and that the character of the Nostalgia Critic is the intellectual property of Channel Awesome. He can leave the site and they still use the character because they own it. The video also features Tamara Chambers and Malcolm Reynolds as being featured players in the video—and by extension the website—when both have already left Channel Awesome. Again, CA owns the video so they can play it however much they want.

The rumors go on that Doug and his brother Robert have retained a lawyer at this point and can’t publically speak out about the scandal at Channel Awesome until the court case has been settled, and that’s reasonable. That happens a lot with civil and criminal cases so there is a lot of strong, if circumstantial, evidence suggesting that Doug has officially severed ties with the company that made him a nerd household name.

At first this entire debacle felt like it was going to die out after a few weeks, but it seems to pick up steam with each and every new story told about it. Now with Doug Walker’s involvement up in the air, it is probably going to go on for much longer. You can keep track of it by following the #ChangeTheChannel.

Thanks for reading.

All aforenamed producers are the owners of their own intellectual properties and I wish them the best of luck in all their future endeavors.