Last year, CollegeHumor started their own video streaming platform, Dropout TV, in an effort to be less reliant upon advertising money and YouTube. Despite massive layoffs at CollegeHumor, the subscription TV service appears to be doing well, even if CollegeHumor as a brand hasn’t reacted quick enough to dangers of over reliance on outside forces.
Dropout TV are far from the only internet comedy site to fall prey to the perils of YouTube monetisation. Cracked no longer has a video team at all, Funny or Die has lost 70% of its workforce, and The Onion are massively struggling. The Facebook Watch fiasco played a huge role in this, as CollegeHumor alumni Adam Connover mentioned in a tweet thread.
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsMy former employer CollegeHumor did this. In order to beat YouTube, Facebook faked incredible viewership numbers, so CH pivoted to FB. So did Funny or Die, many others. The result: A once-thriving online comedy industry was decimated. A $40m fine is laughable; shut Facebook down. https://t.co/iYejU0EGqp
— Adam Conover (@adamconover) October 13, 2019
As journalistic platforms, this is very relevant as a case study. We are all striving towards “direct engagement” in an effort to be less reliant on Facebook and Google’s algorithm for our content. Therefore, bringing in a subscription model, increasing user loyalty and revenues is an attractive prospect. More often than not in journalism in the form of “paywalls”.
This can also go sour. Geek and Sundry is another YouTube based company, focusing on geek culture, that attempted to make the jump to their own site, and failed quite badly. But despite the lay-offs, CollegeHumor is having a level of success with this model. So why is CollegeHumor succeeding where Geek and Sundry failed?
Keeping existing platforms
One thing that CollegeHumor is having to balance is that they already have a massive following on their existing platforms. 13.7 Million subscribers on YouTube, 8.8 million likes on Facebook, they’re a staple of the internet and have been for a while.
This means they cannot wholesale swap off platforms. A proprietary service does not attract new customers, at least not initially. They have a huge audience that has to be catered towards already existing, and they want more, so the existing platforms, as time consuming and difficult it might be, are useful tools for funnelling into Dropout.
Teasing flagship content on free channels
Dimension 20 is a Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying stream online that is massively successful with 941k thousand views per episode. It’s a property that has been a great investment for College Humor.
Only the first nine episodes of 14 are available for free. The rest are only on Dropout. This means that the audience gets drawn into the story, and then suddenly, if they want to see it’s finalisation, they must subscribe to Dropout.
Now, this is also certain to drop some people off. They’ll decry the free-trial nature of the content, and switch off. But for others, they’ll be so invested, that they might actually pay for it, which means it’s important to…
Lowering price points
Dropout costs £3.80 a month. This is a great price point for where they are right now. In the characteristically tongue-in-cheek words of the actual CollegeHumor president, Sam Reich, “It’s like Netflix, but worse… and cheaper.”
CollegeHumor are not trying to compete with the Netflixes, or the Hulus or the Primes of the world. They can’t, that’s not their audience, not their niche. So they can’t charge as much as them.
£3.80/month is a good compromise. Less than a cup of coffee, for content that if you were a fan of College Humor anyway, you’ll probably enjoy, and it means supporting producers you already liked.
Mason Sands of The Crimson had this to say in his reviews of Dropout, “the business has heavily invested in Dropout.tv, providing its creatives with detailed and expensive sets and locations… and the service is cheap.” It also emphasises the fact that CollegeHumor is leveraging the the personal investment the people have in it’s creatives. People know these creatives, and want to support them. £3.80 a month is small enough that most wouldn’t really consider it.
High production-value
You do have to justify the extra expense though, and CollegeHumor does.
They clearly spend far more time and money on these Dropout projects. From the glossy new sets, to high quality graphics, you can see where your money is going. It’s gratifying and feels like you are contributing in a real way.
Each show now feels like a fully produced television show, rather than just simple YouTube skits. Paranoia, a game show where two contestants have to hide the fact that they have smoked marijuana from the other contestants, is a great example of this. Aside from the fact they could never do it on YouTube because of the subject matter, it is a multi-camera, expensive set production, and it looks really good.
The old CollegeHumor skits still work, obviously, but if you’re going to ask for more money, you have to translate that in ways that viewers can appreciate.
Discord
Another great thing about Dropout is that it allows you to access an exclusive Discord chat, to talk with others in the community, suggest improvements, and generally engage with it on a different level compared to streaming services.
Audience members can chat with creatives, stay up to date, and suggest alterations on the Discord channel, in what is probably the best use of a Discord channel I’ve seen for community purposes.
There are channels for each individual show on Dropout, suggestion boxes, announcement channels and in depth community rules.
Discord always struck me as an incredible hub for digital communities, and it’s a shame that they are not more utilised, so CollegeHumor really throwing themselves into this is encouraging to see.
What next?
CollegeHumor hasn’t necessarily succeeded yet. They still lost money last year, and it’s still a huge, expensive gamble.
But it’s gaining traction; Social Blade reports that the Dropout TV Twitter account is gaining 600 followers a month, which isn’t a huge amount, but is enough to keep momentum going. In one year they have an 800% increase in followers, again on Twitter, but that’s the best metric publicly available.
Dropout TV may have our vote, but whether it will survive the callous world of media publishing, only time will tell.
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