Monthly Update - May 2018

April is almost over and as we go into May, there's plenty to look forward to:

So beginning with reviews, I'm hoping to review the highly anticipated third Avengers film, the second film starring that merc with a mouth, a Star Wars story that involves a certain rebel pilot that Harrison Ford once played, a game that involves Norse Gods, the latest innovation from Nintendo and more. As always, all depending on performance and time.

There will be another Boxes of Stuff next month and maybe another top 25 too.

Now let's talk about some news about Channel Awesome. But to clarify before I go into it, I am not closely associated nor affiliated with Channel Awesome in any way. I am just a fan of their work like some of you.

Channel "Not So" Awesome

So those of you who don't know Channel Awesome, its an online media company that for almost a decade has entertained us with reviews, sketches, vlogs and on the odd occasion, documentaries from a wide range of people mainly in the USA but also from other parts of the world such as Australia, the UK and even France. Most of you know the company as the home to The Nostalgia Critic, a character played by Doug Walker who reviews all things nostalgic in a humorous satirical manner who had a website built around him called That Guy with the Glasses before Channel Awesome became its own website. Since the company's launch, they have hosted a number of other shows as well as Walker's own ones such as Atop the Fourth Wall, Cinema Snob, AngryJoe Show, Film Brain, Anime Abandon and many others. There have been some great reviews, great sketches and a lot of other things too.

But of course as it is with most if not all companies, they are not perfect and if they say they are, it would be a lie. Some people don't like what they have to say and when it comes to crossovers and anniversary videos, the making of those things can be hard work. So its now 2018 and some of the company's original contributors have left the company on largely negative terms. And having been quiet for some time, those contributors have come forward to provide a Google Document called "Channel Not So Awesome" in which they talk about a lot of things that the company has done poorly. It's a long document, but the highlights are poor management, sexual allegations, every business decision involving someone who isn't even in a management role in the company, anniversary videos and crossover controversy, who owns the rights to The Nostalgia Critic and many others.

Now the simple way to handle such claims and allegations is for Channel Awesome to apologise to those contributors and hope to makes things better moving forward. However in response to the document, Channel Awesome instead points out parts of the document and why those parts are wrong such as the anniversary videos and crossovers are voluntary and therefore contributors can choose to participate or not. They also talk about the sexual allegations and a whole host of other things.

So that's all well and good. But in response to their response, almost all of their current contributors leave the company presumably in disgust and when that happens, you know for sure that what they said wasn't true at all.

As a fan, I always knew that the company wasn't entirely perfect. For a start the website wasn't easy to navigate and would often require a lot of time to load even on an otherwise fast internet connection. So I had no choice but to use the then functioning Blip.tv which was where all the videos were uploaded before moving onto the That Guy With The Glasses website followed by YouTube when Blip.tv eventually shut down. I suppose another thing I had problems with, was the many times they have had to fight the likes of SOPA, PIPA and YouTube's lack of the Fair Use policy which greatly affected the release of videos which was a problem. And then the store which I did get items from, but even though I am a UK citizen, it shouldn't take a few months for said items to arrive even if they are coming from overseas.

I never thought that Channel Awesome would be as bad as what the contributors said and as a fan, I will see what the future holds. But as of right now, I am disgusted by the way things have been handled and I feel really sorry for those contributors whose time with Channel Awesome was a very negative one. I'd doubt we'll be seeing more stuff from the company any time soon, but at least we can catch the former contributors on YouTube, DailyMotion as well as their own websites so it's not all bad.