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Ego

A recent public brawl has Bill reflecting on how his own ego turned out to be his own worst enemy.

A recent public brawl between two conservative giants has Bill reflecting on how his own ego turned out to be his own worst enemy, and he and Zo dig back into the early days of PJTV so see if we can make some sense out of it all.

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31 replies on “Ego”

Don’t get me wrong, I like a lot of what Crowder does. He does some pretty out there stuff and that’s his brand. He pushes the edge with the platforms he is on and it does hurt his bottom line. If he is going to do that, he needs to carry his own water instead of someone else funding his self-indulgence. Take the risk. If it pays off great. If not, figure out another way to monetize. Just don’t suck the money out of another strong conservative voice and the people who share their company’s risk. Just sayin’.

I supported Crowder until he aired a taped conversation that was done without Jeremy Boreing’s knowledge. That was sleazy and speaks to his character. Jordan Peterson is also a high dollar name and somehow, they were able to come to terms agreeable by both sides. His daughter breaks down what they signed on with that took 5 months of negotiations to complete.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssJMpJxAnWA&t=5s

Crowder basically threw the terms sheet back in their face and demanded $120 million over 4 years. He’s good, but I wouldn’t consider him $120 million good.

Tim Pool and DW tried to come to an agreement and they walked away when it couldn’t be worked out to either side’s satisfaction. Tim didn’t go on the air and disparage DW over it as Crowder did. That would be the adult way to handle it.

I’m not excusing Crowder for airing the dirty laundry publicly, that whole thing could have been handled so much better.
But, I think we need to look at what Steven’s arguments were. He has been deplatformed/demonetized by everyone. Yet, THEY still make money off him. He left Fox, PJ, and Blaze, and each time he had to start over. Now he gets a contract that would ensure after a few years he starts over again, sure with more money in his pocket, but starting over nonetheless. Also, I’m a member of Mug Club, DW, and obviously, here. So I’m hearing all sides and familiar with all the talent, and really have a dog in all the fights. I’m bummed to see this happen, but I also get Steven’s frustration when the conservative media self sensors, Steven also talks a lot about people who get famous on the free market, then remove the free market part, pulling up the ladder and making it hard for other people to come up behind them. I get DW is running a business, and they’re trying to get big to compete with some of the big players, but it seems like DW is taking a lot of benefit and then sharing a bigger portion of the risk. One thing no one talked about yet was the money DW would get from new subscribers, the Mug Club members would all be heading to DW.
Plus let’s all remember, Crowder’s show isn’t anything like DW shows. They have Change My Mind, skits, parody songs, and a host of other things that make the show different from anyone else’s. But DW structured the deal as if those things weren’t there and it was a show like any other. Sure, a negotiation could have taken place, but the DW deal was very static, I’m not sure how you could have structured it to meet was DW was trying to do.
I think LWC and DW are just incompatible, the players have different visions for conservative media and it was just handled poorly. But it does frustrate me when people just throw Steven under the bus without talking about some of his points that actually made sense.

Conservatism is also about the free market and pure capitalism. DW has to make money in order to stay in business and bring content to the world. Crowder could have countered the parts he was upset with. DW is right to be concerned about Crowder being censored. He has been in the past – more than many other conservative pundits. They need to build in safeguards against some of his outrageous shenanigans.

I would like to recommend another conservative pundit who pointed out the capitalist nature of the business model and how it should be championed, check out Awaken With JP. His postings are mostly satirical in nature and always on point.

Crowder’s point in both his videos is that the current business model of multiple conservative media entities is wrong because this business model requires these entities to be enforcers of big tech’s leftest political preferences. This is not a cheap shot. It is reality. He has said repeatedly that it is not the money on offer. It’s interesting that DW has consistently made this about the money and people keep focusing on that.

Of course Crowder says it’s not about the money. I would not expect him to say anything else. It may not be ALL about the money but there is no way I will even consider that the money is not a significant factor.

There is “no way”? That is odd. The motives of a man are difficult to know with certainty if he speaks them aloud. To know, beyond contest, the heart of a man sounds like the arena of God’s knowledge more than mans.

If it isn’t about money, then what rational basis is his annoyingly-public complaint? It is extremely hard to believe that anyone who appears to desire the limelight attention is not motivated by the ever-corrupting dollar. That seems to be sufficiently-reasonable doubt about any altruistic claims for “The Cause.”
It does not take God’s knowledge to come to such a rational position, and being so dismissive of such conclusions makes one sound like that which he condemns.

Crowder has spent years attached to the idea of Conservatism. He speaks it as a rule. He promotes it fundamentally. I do not think that it should be irrational to stand by it most vociferously when there seem to be more attacks on it than ever.
We can agree that multiple platforms have censored Crowder. We can agree that he did not yield in order to get back to his money, but fought the actions. We can honestly state that he kept the same message that demonetized him repeatedly. Why? For the love of money? Greed? Seems counterintuitive to me.
What if, and please hear me out on this, he really believes in what he is saying and the two parties just simply disagree? What if the size of DW and the ideological structure of SC just don’t run the same course? What if his experiences has formed a logic that DW is incapable of operating on due to the barriers and challenges of a larger business?
I’m not the biggest fan of SC. The man called me a terrorist because I commented on a video of his. That doesn’t mean that he is out for blood. It doesn’t mean that he is nefarious and wicked. It means he is seeing these situations through his prism.
We cannot afford the division in a time like this. I wish that he had not gone public with this. That said, it is done. Whatever happens next, the world still goes on. Drawing lines of division and getting at each others throats won’t help anyone but the left.
Dave, you are free to believe whatever you wish. It just seems odd to me that you are certain of the intents of another mans mind and heart. Bill speaks about retrospectively learning that ego was playing into his decisions…HIS decisions. He (a very intelligent and introspective guy) didn’t see his own motivating forces. How can anyone be 100% sure of anyone else’s?

There’s plenty of conservative content on Daily Wire. If they are enforcers of Big Tech’s leftist content, they’re doing a crappy job of it.

Crowder entertains people, The Daily Wire actually accomplishes Conservative goals. They blew the Social Marxists out of the water with “What is a Woman”. DW was significantly responsible for turning Virginia into a Red State last election and that’s no small feat. DW got a hospital in Nashville to stop carving up and sterilizing kids and continues to throw light on places that practice that sort of thing. Etc., etc., etc.

There are more accomplishments but those are the ones that spring to mind immediately. These are examples of not only talking but doing.

You’re right, if DW is somehow siding with the enemy they are doing a very lousy job of it.

What has Crowder actually accomplished for our side? Besides keeping people entertained and preaching to the choir?

I’m going to take a guess here and say that considering the bridges he burned Crowder isn’t looking to get involved with any existing conservative media organization. It looks to me like he’s striking out on his own.

I hope his ‘business model’ isn’t to pull eyeballs, subscriptions, merch sales and other revenue streams by attacking the people who are already on our side.

If he does that, he’s a traitor plain and simple. There are an abundance of targets on the Left and zero gain to be had from friendly fire.

There is one very important aspect of the Crowder/DW situation that has been ignored in every commentary that I’ve seen regarding the situation. That is the fact that Crowder is and has been demonetized by YouTube for quite a log time. I don’t know about his monetization status on other platforms. He could well be demonetized there, too. That means, some of those monetization deductions that are in the proposal are already in effect at the onset.

Even more important than that is the censoring aspect of it.

The first segment of Crowder’s show is self-censored for YouTube. Then he has a less restricted segment for Rumble and, finally a very unrestricted segment for Mug Club. 

Even though his YouTube segment is already demonetized by YouTube, he does YouTube in order to get “eyes”. He wants those eyes so that he can try to redirect them to Rumble or Mug Club.

It appears that the problem with DW’s proposal is that it will have the effect of holding Crowder’s Rumble and Mug Club content to the YouTube standards. I think that is what Crowder is so upset about. The DW proposal will be a de facto enforcement the censorship demanded by YouTube because DW will also own the rights to all of Crowder’s merch and email lists, etc.

So, I think Crowder is right. The DW model is not the model for him. I don’t like that he made a public display of it but maybe it was his way of trying to get other content creators to move toward his model and avoid censorship. More power to him!

Yeah I think Crowder could have handled things better but I think he does have some valid points like you said. Their offer to him was almost insultingly bad if you know anything about him. Like the YouTube demonetization where he is already demonetized and would be losing like 20% of their offer already. He has always been very clear about only doing 1 sponsor slot per show and they make him do 3.

I think the big difference is the Daily Wire is framing themselves as a traditional media empire with all the bad that comes with it, just with a conservative viewpoint and Crowder is saying it should be different. The Daily Wire is looking at revenue streams and maintaining their current revenue streams, even if it comes from people who hate them and want them to fail. Crowder is more concerned about total revenue and trying to make new revenue streams that are sustainable and don’t rely on people who hate them. In Crowder’s view, Youtube demonetization is an opportunity to bring people to Mug club, sell Fight Like Hell t-shirts, and try to find ways to make money without being beholden to Big Tech. Daily Wire’s business model won’t let hosts “Fight Like Hell” against big tech, they have to be friendly to big tech.
The other thing that annoys me with the Daily Wire contract is the lack of balance in risk/reward. The Daily Wire’s big defense was if you bring in less money then you make less money, which isn’t what their contract said. It said you make less money if you lose a revenue stream and doesn’t mention at all if you make up for that with a different revenue stream. It doesn’t give him any rewards if he performs above expectations so he has to take on risk but gets no reward if it goes better than planned. It also is focused on revenue streams and not overall revenue. He could get kicked off of all of big-tech and lose 80% of his contract but drive more subscribers and merchandise sales that could end up making Daily Wire tons of money while he’s making a small fraction of what he was supposed to.

So I think it was a very very bad contract. I am not sure it was quite bad enough though to warrant this public feud between friends and ally’s in the conservative movement, at least without a lot more discussion between them. I think Crowder could have at least discussed it in much more detail with not just Jeremy but Ben and Klavan who he’s in touch with also and had much more discussions on these details with all of Daily Wire before making this public.

Couldn’t have said it better myself. So I’m glad you said it – and made many more point, too.

I’m just curious but how many of you have read the actual contract? How many are lawyer enough to really understand it?

I watched the video of Jeremy Boreing going line by line through the important parts of the contract and explaining it. And if an employment contract requires lawyers to understand it then that is an incredibly bad contract. You shouldn’t need to be a lawyer to know how much money you are making and the various terms of your employment, it should be clear. And the contract was fairly simple on many aspects and definitely doesn’t take a lawyer to understand.

It doesn’t work that way. Louder with Crowder on YouTube was a Brand Account channel owned by Blaze Media LLC. His channel was the property of Blaze TV and video posts were made under Blaze Media LLC’s Brand Account.

Crowder, had he gone to work at The Daily Wire, would have had an entirely new Brand Account (for YouTube’s purposes) channel with no strikes or any other liabilities associated with it. Whatever was up on YouTube under the original “Louder with Crowder” channel would have remained the property and liability of Blaze.

The new TDW channel wouldn’t have carried over the strikes etc. that were issued to the Brand Account Crowder channel at Blaze Media LLC.

It’s not like Crowder’s content would just switch ownership. That’s not possible unless TDW wanted to buy that FROM Blaze. I’m not aware of any such efforts. Steven Crowder is mobile from a business aspect after his contract with Blaze lapsed without renewal but his content created under contract to Blaze is not mobile unless Blaze wants to sell it.

The original “Louder with Crowder” channel was published and posted by Blaze TV and the originating entity of anything new from TDW would have been for all practical purposes a new channel. Blaze TV OWNS those previous videos and Blaze TV was not in the negotiations for purchasing that content as far as I’m aware.

This is why we don’t have all Bill Whittle’s content from years back available here on BillWhittle.com too. Bill, like Steven Crowder, does not own that work. Any strikes Bill might have garnered under those past Brand Accounts do not apply to Bill’s current Brand Account. Even though it’s still Bill Whittle’s name and face we see on this site’s posts to YouTube they’re not the same channel as what he did with PJTV et. al. Bill’s work, and Crowders work, along with any channel history or punitive actions do not automatically transfer with a change to a new employer’s channel.

Likewise, if Crowder had just struck out on his own and started his own Brand Account none of the previous strikes or punitive measures would have followed him.

I know this all sounds like a bunch of gobbledygook but that’s the way this stuff works. Which is probably why you haven’t heard anything about strikes being carried over and a liability to Crowder with a new Brand Account.

Those are the facts as far as channels and strikes go. I’m not being snarky or belittling what you said. The rest of this is just my opinion.

All of that said, I think it was a mistake for TDW to even attempt to negotiate with Crowder. Steven Crowder has his own way of doing things and it’s not compatible with TDW anymore than TDW is compatible with Fox News. I think Jeremy Boring saw an opportunity to add some talent to his business’s portfolio and made an offer that TDW could live with. In retrospect that might not have been a good idea for either TDW or Crowder.

I don’t think Crowder did the right thing even as far as Crowder is concerned. He could have continued with his own gig saying whatever the hell he wanted to and absorbing the consequences without dragging The Daily Wire through the mud. He didn’t have to drag TDW though the mud even after he had turned down negotiations. He might have a point with some of what he said but he still abused The Daily Wire and the trust and confidence of the people who operate that business. That’s a crappy thing to do. I don’t think Daily Wire deserved the kind of treatment they got from Crowder. Whatever Crowder’s base principles and goals might be taking a dump on your friends is not a good policy. Nor does it improve your image.

I don’t think that’s how Crowders previous contract with the Blaze was set up. We don’t have the actual contract to say for certain but we can glean some things about Crowders ownership of the channel from this fallout. One, he is no longer with the blaze and yet he has since posted 2 videos to his Youtube channel and is live-streaming his interview with Tim Pool tonight on that same channel. He also mentioned in his video about being demonetized and in Jeremy’s response Jeremy even acknowledged that as being something they would have wiped out in negotiations since he’s been demonetized. Blaze still owns the videos and will keep them hosted on their site for BlazeTV subscribers but it appears in my view from what is out there publicly that Crowder owns his Youtube channel and Daily Wire had planned to continue posting on that Youtube channel, his millions of subscribers on that channel is part of what made him worth so much. From what I have seen, it seems like his contract with the Blaze was more of them paying him and him using them to host his content as opposed to his channel being managed by the Blaze. But this is just guesses based off what he’s said, his contract with the Blaze is not public so I could be wrong.

Also Youtube has been pretty clear that it is more about the person then the specific channel. Like when he would be suspended they made it clear if he posted anything to his Crowderbits channel, even just typical content that is posted there, it would be viewed as trying to evade the suspension and he’d be in even bigger trouble. So if he were to make a new channel, Steve Crowder, I imagine Youtube would be pretty quick to demonetize it.

Yeah I agree TDW just shouldn’t have made an offer at all. All of their shows have a similar feel to them that is just not at all what Crowder is about and Crowder is very independent and wouldn’t want to fit into their format.

You might be right, I might be right, it could be that some of what each of us say is right, etc. It still comes down to the same place because I don’t think Paul’s point about the state of Crowder’s YouTube channel had any merit as it applies to this situation.

Both parties are well aware of the situation with Crowder’s channel and that would have been taken into account, however it applies, if serious contract negotiations were to commence. It’s not like TDW was trying to pull a fast one and gyp Crowder on the basis of the state of his channel at the transition point.

I’m not trying to be nasty here but to me that smacks of rationalizing an excuse more than something that would be a real issue in a business negotiation conducted in good faith.

So I will take the counter point just for the heck of it. Given the likelihood that Crowder will be demonetized on YT, the other revenue stream is the ad reads. Crowder also had issue with this though this is likely to be a stronger revenue stream for DW than whatever YT pays. He stated he only wanted to do one ad read per 60 minute show. This limits the income to DW, then he should expect less.
The other aspect is this was a first draft, basically to further a conversation. Have a negotiation. If there were things he felt this strongly about, and it wasn’t really about the money, then his agent should have prepared the MOU. But he chose to not even respond to the document.
As a business person I find that unprofessional.

As near as I can guess, and of course I don’t get to see the Daily Wire’s books, the ad income from YouTube incidentally sponsored ads is paltry in comparison to the ad reads revenue from intentional sponsors. That ad read revenue is for ads that can’t be blocked. Yes, you can skip over them and I most certainly do that but you have to do that manually with the slider at the bottom of the video. To any ad blocking software the ad reads are indistinguishable from the rest of the show. It’s a pretty much guaranteed delivery of the ad and even I can’t be bothered to skip it if I’m not sitting at my desk when the ad read comes on.

So I’m thinking that buying a read ad on any of TDW shows is probably pretty expensive. That pretty much has to be their main income driver from advertising and then added to their subscription revenue stream.

I’m a businessman, among other things and I don’t only find what Crowder did unprofessional. I find it dirty, sneaky and underhanded too. I realize we can’t do serious large scale business on a handshake anymore and things like Steven Crowder pulled in this situation are why that is so.

I can’t find any excuse for this sort of behavior. It’s disreputable and dishonest and should always be condemned in the soundest terms whenever this kind of crap rears it’s ugly head. It doesn’t matter to me what TDW was going for, what matters to me is how Crowder took a dump on his erstwhile friends, supporters and fellow soldiers in the fight against The Evil Left.

Iron sharpening iron is a good description of Bill, Zo, and The Virtue Signal. I love you guys, (and Scott, and Steve.)

My experience with Daily Wire. Immediately after the very apparent fraud of the 2020 election, I joined up at the mid level. (I think they had three levels of membership. Not really knowing what I truly wanted, I took the wishy-washy, middle of the road option to try it out.) I must preface this with letting you know that I am not particularly computer savvy. I can use the computer until I run into a problem, and then I am lost until someone shows me what to do. I can’t figure it out on my own; my brain just doesn’t work that way.

So I joined up for the dual purpose of being able to access the Andrew Klavan, and Candace Owens shows, and to support an organization which I believed, (and still do,) to be putting out important content. Right out of the starting gate I had a problem. That problem was that every time I logged on I was barraged with requests to upgrade to the top level of membership. Frankly, these requests seemed more like demands in that I just couldn’t figure out how to say, “Not at this time, thank-you,” and access the stuff I wanted to watch. So DW got my pittance of support for two years, (because of the auto-renew, and the fact that I just forgot to cancel, which was my fault,) and I got nothing, because I was unable to access anything. Thankfully, the credit card I used had been changed, so they couldn’t auto-renew this year.

You probably are all thinking at this point that I am an idiot, and concerning things of a digital nature I will agree with you. Nevertheless, DW just made me angry. Why couldn’t their algorithm, or whatever the blasted thing is called, just accept that I joined up at the mid level, and let me get on with life?

DW might have a fantastic business plan, and it is making them lots of money. More power to them; I have no problem with great business plans that make lots of money. Without money, they would not be able to put out the quality stuff they are creating. If it were just great entertainment I would have no gripe. But they are also putting out important stuff, like Bill’s documentary series on the evils of communism, which probably needs to be seen most by the kinds of people who wouldn’t dream of signing up with DW. They are just preaching to the choir.

And it’s not a good business plan to irritate your customer.

I am once again contemplating joining DW for the express purpose of viewing Bill’s series, but I’m wondering if I’ll run into the same road block. Maybe I’ll surrender, and sign up for one month at the top level so I can dodge their demands.

Maryanne,
I sympathize with your pain. There is nothing more irritating than paying for one thing only to experience a constant barrage of declaration that you are a cheap ba*****. Sorry that is what I often think others think of me, and it nearly slipped out. 😉 Needless to say, it’s an aggravating money grubbing tactic too often used by internet hacks solely intent upon fleecing others. This sort of tactic is why I don’t subscribe to many things at all — exclusively BWC and The Epoc Times. In my experience, many of these online businesses behave like snake oil salesmen and charlatans.
Okay … rant complete … onto the matter at hand ….
You could try to install an ad blocker in your browser. Depending upon which web browser you use would determine how to do so. I typically use the Firefox browser on my PC’s (both Linux and Windows), and their is a plugin tool called AdBlock Plus that can be fetched from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus. I have not yet bothered to learn what is useful for other browsers like Chrome, MS Edge, Safari, etc. Perhaps there is someone else around here that has.

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