I’m Glad I Didn’t Sell LTT, BIGTIME
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- Опубликовано: 18 окт 2024
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Jerimiah Burton and Zach Jobe announce that they are leaving Donut to found Bigtime, a new automotive channel, following the private equity takeover of Donut due to concerns about increasingly corporate, un-creative attitudes in leadership.
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I was an avid DONUT Media watcher years ago and it was obvious when they were bought. The content changed from educational to 'we bought the worst bla bla bla products, do they work' videos. It was more algorithm focus rather than car passion videos.
yessir
Iam gonna miss the D list
Everyone on Donut complained at the time because that’s how noticeable the drop in quality was.
James suddenly stopped appearing as much, corporate wouldn't let him drive any cars due to insurance, and he looked totally deflated in his videos.
I watched them off and on and really the last few times I watched them it wasn't the same.
RUclipsrs sponsoring other RUclipsrs sounds like the kind of culture I'd love to see
Same same
From what I know this wouldn't be their first time sponsoring another RUclips channel. I think Linus just wants to see this be successful. So like with framework he's doing what he's willing to but instead of buying them because they're probably not going to accept that. You're just going to sponsor a video and give them a bunch of really neat tools
it already happens with Patrion.
Are there any others than Good Mythical Morning?
@@daylenjackson9996 Rhett and Link are absolute geniuses. PhillyD is another RUclipsr that has "sponsored" others.
"Bought by private equity" ... and there it is, the downfall of anything good.
amen right there
Anything private equity owned is shareholder(as in the individuals that fronted the money and took out the loans) focused, first and foremost with low tolerance for risk.
im gonna ask something stupid, what is private equity?
@@atif1538 a type investment fund, but usually not open to the public. Wikipedia does a better job of explaining it than me.
@@atif1538Rich people and/or firms holding your company and usually restructuring it so they can extract the maximum amount of revenue from you before you hit bankruptcy.
I was watching a Donut video and one of the host casually mentioned that project cars are no longer allowed at the Donut office/garage. That was the day I was basically finished with their content.
Whaaaaat?
I was trying to remember if it was an actual Donut video or just James on a different show but I'm pretty sure he talked about how some of the old formats were killed since the new acquisition and how they were having to do "these kinds" of videos now.
Which video is it? I haven't watch some of their latest videos yet.
was it Nolan and his imperial? I know they made content on it, but the first video of him trying to get it going he said that it wasn't really welcome at the shop anymore.
they probly dont want dead cars at the shop lol
Car media dying thanks to corporate buyouts, Hoonigan, donut, Car Throttle in the UK, all ruined by buyouts.
Eyyyyy another pre buyout CT fan, im happy for Alex and Jack and Ethan starting their own channels
Throw Roadkill on that list. Once they started the MotorTrend media service, all the charm or the Roadkill brand slowly died. All the grass roots appeal of the "shade tree mechanic", "run what you brung", "drive and enjoy, break, fix, repeat" charms are all gone from those brands.
@@chizomni Edwin too
@@archinutbh Roadkill's might be the most egregious of the bunch, which is saying alot.
@@Mavairo Super sad. I love roadkill but I'm not paying for motortrend to keep up with everything. They could grow so much further if it was publicly available
Donut went from being one of the greatest automotive channels doing all sorts of fun stuff to being basically a reaction channel with a few episodes of big projects sprinkled in between. B2B was such a great series.
exactly and that took 3 years, which Luke doesn't understand
Science Garage was another amazing one. I was so sad when Bart was no longer on the channel. Hi-Lo is the last decent series on the channel, and even that has taken a back seat to all the "tool review" or whatever garbage they're cranking out. I bought a HrsPrs shirt a few years ago (one of the first shirts they launched), and i still wear it with pride, but not sure how long that's going to last.
@@MechaHereticyeah seriously why did they get rid of Bart!
Hi-Low was the best thing they did. B2B and U2S were great as well
"people weren't pointing this out til now"
Donuts community has been extremely vocal about the lost soul of donut for 2 years. I'm not sure how much you dug into community discourse prior to this news
Exactly. As a long time fan who always lurks in the comments of their videos, people have been speaking out about their dissatisfaction for quite some time.
Unless it’s related to computers, he knows about as much as the average Joe
i was also an avid viewer of donut couple of years ago and then it seems to interest me lesser and lesser to the point where it was not getting recommended to me. Maybe it could be due to I not watching it or the general rotation of channels or new watch style of mine. But its certainly a possibility that the quality took a massive hit.
yeah, when they killed up to speed, money pit, bumper to bumper... everyone notices and complained!
I think it may have significantly increased now since those series were killed a while ago
LTT collab: "I spent 100 hours in Canada's underground car scene"
Canada's underground car scene: Thomas and James stood around their broken Land Rover Discovery while Thomas tries desperately to justify buying it to James.
All the while DDE smashes a Lamborghini
@@CaptainHoratioPugwashI’d watch that
lol and jake isnt in the video cuss he is a "car" guy hahaha
Canadas actual underground car scene is pretty nuts at the moment... Cars get stolen every day
I think Jobe and Jer said it best: donut was started by car enthusiasts, not car experts. They came in expecting a lot more professionals and experienced technicians, but that became them, and they were underpaid for what they brought to the table. It was always a kitschy channel when they weren’t involved, and now they’re bringing a channel that focuses (presumably, we haven’t seen much yet) on builds and hands-on mechanic work, where their respective backgrounds align.
And yes, back in the day, they used to have that cool dude in the kitchen set that explained to me half my knowledge of how cars work, but where did he go? Love that guy
I loved the original Science Garage series!! He taught me basically all I know about cars and actually understood too
I miss Bart too, Science Garage was so helpful. But he left way before that due to totally unrelated business
Bart got canned because he wanted time off with his new kid
He became a father, thats why he left. Totally understandable
Wish he'd make a special guest appearance in Big Time
@@Gettenhart no he got forced out because he wouldn't make donut a higher priority than his family.
Roosterteeth is a prime example of when u get bought out you lose touch of your community
RIP rooster 🐓
RT was the first thing I thought of when they talked about a channel not surviving a buyout.
didnt that happen to death battle and redvsblue that ended up basically killing them off i thought we left those companies behind with how many multiple million sub channels are around these days and feel super dumb for trying to understand why these RUclipsrs are so dumb to sign away the thing they made and put their efforts into and its sad to know this still happens why cant RUclipsrs learn theres thousands of videos on why its never a good idea
So glad I bought the Red vs Blue DVD's years ago :)
Unless u Geoff
We're glad you didn't sell too
Can I buy you tho 🥺
@@Mr.JimPickensdear leader Jim Pickens
This by 💯 would have to split attention between older content on current channels and your current content on non-existent channels.
Are we.
@@Mr.JimPickensi wish they came clean about the Madison situation
People had been pointing out the substantial drop in quality in Donut videos for a LOOONG time. My friends and I used to wait for every episode of Money Pit S1 and other old series (RIP Science Garage), but then eventually all those project formats that took a lot of time and effort in research and production got replaced with reactions, tier lists, and such quick turnover, mainstream, profitability-oriented videos. Over time the majority of uploads from the channel just got increasingly stale.
Sure they must have kept growing because these videos reach a broader audience but they lost engagement from a lot of long term subscribers who came for the nerdy grease monkey stuff found other channels that made the content we wanted to see more of from Donut. The first video from BigTime seems to have that old Money Pit/Hi-Low charm and I'm all here for it.
perfectly said
agreed...I will keep watching Donut for the next Hi-Low, but depending on how it goes until then will determine if I drop my subscription after that or not. I want to watch actual build content like the Ranger and Hi-Low, not tiktok product reviews
That's what it is. Quality info replaced with quick and dumb reactions. I like the Donut guys, so not calling them dumb. It's just low effort stuff that everyone does.
I'm excited to get my neurons firing again and to be inspired to get into a project car again. I loved that inspiring feeling but that's something I didn't really notice I missed until now.
I REALLY hope they bring back Hi-Low, but on the BigTime channel now
Shocking. I left my fav company after “growth above all else” poisoned the place.
Yeah, same, they made promises to investors that the company would be worth like 10x what it currently was worth in the span of 4 years. So cuts were being made whilst the range of work we were being expected to do kept growing...
If you have investments in any blue coloured DIY stores in the UK, 2026 will be a very interesting year for its stock value, that's all I'll say. They had massive growth during COVID and clearly used that to convince their investors that the growth was going to continue.
"Growth above all else" sounds like cancer... Therefor the quest for infinite financial growth is a cancer on society.
@@bellowick That's exactly what got my company on the enshittification path. The COVID bubble. All us grunts knew it was temporary. The leadership refused to listen and now they're scrambling trying to solve their "sudden unforeseen" tank in business.
@@bellowick damn, I wish I did stock trading, sounds like an interesting short.
capitalism is cancer
Rooster Teeth survived their initial corporate takeover, but after Warner came in, everything went to shit. It also didn’t help that they had several major controversies involving weird sexual behavior and abuse by a few employees and discrimination charges leveled towards executives by several former employees. I miss the good ol’ days of that channel. They were probably my first subscription on RUclips way back in the day because I watched Red vs. Blue on their website.
Ahhhh Red vs. Blue. THAT'S why that name sounds familiar.
I bought the original RvB dvd at Gamestop back in 2004.
It’s so sad to see titans fall like they did. Money gets involved, more so, money-minded people get involved to art and it goes to shit every time. It’s happened for decades.
God people just fucking love being creeps.
reminder that when those types of stories come out, its been going on for a long time. the "good ol' days" weren't, at least not behind the scenes
@@TheBucketSkill When you take people whose marketable skill is "acting like an idiot on camera to sell ads to bigger idiots", the power tends to go to their head.
James left too and started his own channel as well, Speeed is his new channel name!
Yeah seem they got black out orders on James... Good bye doughnut
"In the end - maybe it wasn't the corporate inflation & Q2 profits we subscribed for" Sun Tzu, the art of corporate channel governance c.1508
very fitting, since all of Sun Tzu's advice in that book was for stupid rich people, like "make sure you're actually feeding your armies and stuff." i really like the subtle presentation of it as blindingly obvious
sun tzu was 500 bc btw
@@BlastinRopesmall mishap, this is actually out of the appendix featured from the second Edition on, written by the son of sun tzu, son of sun sen.
@@giddycadet k
Banger comment
Hoonigan showed all acquisition companies what corporate management can do to car channels
Hoonigan was on a decline before Ken passed being under Wheelpros. They basically only have this vs that now
Ken was the glue that stuck Hoonigan together after they got acquired, it was still worth watching from time to time.
But now? There isn't much left.
Same with Roosterteeth
I'm still salty that Roadkill always said they'd never ever let themselves be bought and they'd never leave RUclips or be behind a paywall, and then they got bought by Motortrend, had their content delisted, and put behind a paywall
I haven't gone to the Hoonigan channel since Ken passed so... I don't know if we can really blame that entirely
If you browse the subreddit, there have been people complaining about the declining quality of Donut videos for as long as I can remember honestly, not just after the recent events
Everything is lost when up to speed and Hi-Lo series ended they really wanted to milk donut
The whole Donut thing looks decidedly similar to the fall of CarThrottle. Surprised they didn't mention it, but every host has gone on to join the AutoAlex Automotive Universe.
So glad they all made the jump, been some great content the past few weeks from TopDeadCentre as well as AutoAlex and the V2 channel as well
im so happy with autoalex's team. all the people i liked at car throttle in one roof again making content that THEY want to make. it's dirty, gritty, silly, and just downright FUN. and that's the entire point. and they've brought in other people, like Tom Lenthal from Tom Lenthal LTD, who are so much fun to have on. they are my top car youtube channel currently. mighty car mods went way to far into "i will never afford this" territory for a few years and i lost a lot of enjoyment. yeah, fun to see crazy cars being built, but the roots of the channel is "do this in your driveway" and they weren't doing that. so alex's group IS. crappy cars, fixing stuff, doing silly things with them, like the recent Poland road trip. that was fun and interesting. pranks, taking in the sights, breakdowns, all the good stuff from a crappy car road trip. seriously top shelf content from a world missing the old Top Gear when the Grand Tour team isn't doing it full time anymore (miss those legends, may their car related lives be long and silly)
@@tvandbeermakehomergo All The Gear has done some fun travel related content. camping in a 924 at the Nurburgring, taking a "north pole" modified Rover around iceland, and then trying to get across tokyo without a phone or map. lots of car stuff, but mostly related to camping, survival and travel. it's ethan and jack from car throttle, so it's great cinematography and banter between two friends who've worked together for many years.
Shout out to James for starting his own channel as well, super looking forward to seeing what he does. He also has a great video showing the timeline and some pretty deep history of Donut.
Operating a company solely for growth to create return on investment is a cancer: it's ridiculous that a consistently profitable company is no longer good enough. Don't sell, stay private.
As long as upper management doesn't get greedy, and also people support it by buying it this holds true.
Otherwise if you don't support what you love with money then don't be surprised when what you love goes public just to stay afloat.
Your love and admiration doesn't pay the bills.
Once you sell you're legally obligated to act in the shareholders best interest, it is one of those regulations that seemed like a good idea but created the soulless corporations and private equity firms we have now. It is a bit more muddy with an actual private buyer and depends on the contract but VC firms wouldn't get any investors if they didn't have in their contract that they will act in the investors best interests. If a VC firm buys part of your company and you turn around and give everyone a 50% raise, you'll find yourself on the other end of a law suit very quickly unless you have a very good justification for it.
@@Outwardpd I mean they bought the company, it makes sense that the shareholders can do whatever they want.
if you sell your company then it should be pretty obvious that the buyer is gonna milk it into the ground.
that's why I hope companies like steam will never go public, 'cause the moment that happens, you can basically kiss goodbye to your game library.
I believe that their trip to Australia and seeing how MCM operates was one of the big driving forces behind their departure. A great example to follow!
The start of the RAV series! that first episode was absolute prime MCM, legit like one of there videos from five years ago
The Donut Daily Drag Race video has to be the perfect analogy for the situation. Donut cast we all know and love show up to a drag strip with their cool dailies with history and personality, when suddenly some rando from corporate who NO ONE (not even regular Donut viewers) knows about shows up in his base model Tesla and completely sucks ALL the fun out of the video.
That one was definitely terrible, and certainly showed how everything was being steamrolled by a guy in a suit (figurative and literal).
I thought it was satire but I am beginning to think it was for real
Dude that is the perfect description of what happened to Donut
@@DF-et4gs It most definitely was satire but it became prophetic retroactively.
That dude wasn't being serious. Lighten up people!
Linus, there's 1 rule of thumb you need to remember when it comes to acquisitions - are you ready and willing to walk away at a moments notice? If the answer is yes, sell it and hope things go well, but be prepared to walk away when your promised control goes away. If the answer is no, DO NOT SELL.
That's the unfortunate nature of business. If you built a business and you aren't ready to quit, walk away, retire, etc and you take an acquisition offer based on (often) false promises thinking it'll help you create a product/brand you could otherwise only dream about, you're guaranteed to get burned badly.
Too many brands take the buyout offer and ultimately realize serious mistakes were made. There are a few stories where a bad sale turns into a good move in the long run, like Portnoy buying Barstool back for $1*, but those are few and far between.
My company was bought out by a private equity company and they did us really good. We are a hybrid, construction manufacturing plant. The acquisition got us lower insurance rates better benefits, and more PTO. And it’s been like that for years. Unfortunately our private equity company was bought out by a publicly traded corporation and things seem to be on the downfall. 20 hour plus mandatory overtime a week, a through put rate above the capacity of the facility and storage grounds.
Maybe I don't understand but overtime can't be mandatory. U have hours to do and only do hours, if they wanna overtime sure but rate goes x2-5 (x2 overtime, x5 non-working day(sunday))
@@mateuszzimon8216 Depends on the country
@@mateuszzimon8216 in most of the US, if the company isn't part of a union industry, they can say "your shift is 60 hours a week. if you dont do that, dont apply." i worked for one of those. now, they made sure you were paid very well, had huge benefits, and did tons of stuff in-house to help keep us happy, like calling in "texas roadhouse" to hold a massive bbq every other month instead of taking lunch that shift. it was hard work, but the way you were treated made it kind of worth doing it. and the overtime pay made your check really fat. i sadly left under bad terms, but i have no ill will against the company. it was a stupid rule that caused me to leave after being a very valued and highly trained (they were aiming for crew lead) worker. but as a company with long hours, i think they do it right. their competitors dont shower their workers with money and benefits like they did. if i could go back, i'd work for em again in the same shop.
@@mateuszzimon8216 overtime can definitely be mandatory
lukes jenja is like having subway surfers in the corner for retention
Lol
lmao
Linus knows their audience.
it worked for me
Get your facts straight, that’s the GPU Crash Tower Game.
Private equity is a blight on humanity
all systems have their upsides and downsides, private equity can cost long term viability but is also able to utilize humanity's natural greed to drive up general productivity
And HOAs
Here in Freedomland™, there are HOSPITALS owned by PE firms. It's disgusting.
@@ragtop63 Compulsory membership of HOAs should be illegal. The runaway miniature dictatorships that emerge as a result of the current system is horrible and Americans deserve better.
@@FireAngelOfLondon I agree. Where I live HOAs are required on all new development. It's built into the legislation of this area. That should definitely be illegal.
How interesting 3 years ago? That's around the time I noticed a difference and reduced my viewing of donut. I used to watch all their vids but that's around the time I noticed a change. They also got rid of science garage, up to speed and bumper2bumper, my bread and butter for their channel.
They all got bought out by the same VC about the same time
I didn't notice any changes because their video kinda dissappear from my feed.
RUclips is notorious for unsubscribing people from channels without notice. I'm constantly having to check every time I watch any video of any channel.
same
amen
This reminds me of when Motortrend got acquired, they ended some shows and now only Roadkill/Roadkill garage resemble what they were previously.
I was stoked when Mike Finnegan, Tony Angelo and Lucky Costa started their own RUclips channels.
Roadkill is the reason why I love cars, once they stopped uploading on RUclips I stopped watching.
tony specially didnt leave for sum gripe with the company tho to be fair im pretty sure his daughter got cancer or sum and he just needed to spend more time at home
@@Pandara-up5lw I thought he said it was the distance from family etc.
15:56 I’m really glad you brought this up Linus.
There’s a whole nother side to it that we maybe don’t see.
The point you made of the corporate overhead of admin and working requirements is something that doesn’t always align with passion projects is a really good one.
Maybe the two guys just want to work on passion projects and don’t care about money as much anymore? And the company is like we can’t do that here sadly because of the admin stuff.
Then shouting out the new channel on their channel is a huge sign that the company doesn’t hold any negative feelings towards the two starting their own thing together and that’s really nice to see
That dude in blue had a pretty good take on it where, to sum it up, when you are a up and coming YT channel (team or solo) you are more willing to take risks that are related to what your channel presents/invests/writes. Where as with private equity buying a brand - they are just trying to fund and keep up what was already built with the risk, and therefor - taking *further risks is not really something you're going to see. When the original "risk takers" in the case of a team stick around - you start to see the inception of "stuck in a box" , and then you get things like Donut - Bigtime.
Bigtime needs their own ScrapyardWars series sponsored by LTT.... for the memes :D
I was just thinking that junkyard wars would be a great car RUclipsr deathmatch
Jared from questionable garage can be the yard troll
Luke and Linus should do a junkyard wars series with them, then they do scrapyard wars but building a system in the cars they make in the junkyard wars
I can see this working both ways...Linus and Luke go to literal scrapyards, Zach and Jeremiah buy PC parts...
@@Josh_Quillan 😆😆 yes!
scrapyard wars for cars exists, it's called 24 hours of lemons
Big Time has 1.2 million subs and they only have two videos on their channel. amazing
Yeah it is amazing. When they started the channel it was 250000 subscribes and when they released the 2. video they were up to 1,2 million subscribers
People yearn for the honest car videos. Not toplists and borderline paid car ads
Similar views on @vin_tra 's new channel.
To be fair tho, subs =/= views, I know an insane amount of people showed up to support them leaving, hopefully that is reflected in watchtime over the next couple months. I really do. Its easy to stand up and say "I agree with this thing" but to actually show up every time and support it, is a lot more work.
Jeremiah was on his Laptop buying a Semitruck 😂😂😂
Car channels live and die on host enthusiasm and project series and humility so they are doing the right thing
Same thing happened with Fitment Industries YT channel as well a while ago, Alex and Dakota left and became independent.
The Fitment Industries channel is basically dead now. Donut still has great people there so hopefully it wont go belly up.
same thing happened to Hoonigan too especially after Ken died.
Feel the same about car throttle too😢
Also wtf1
@@Ziegrief ooof car throttle i forgot about that
Gotta take good care of the talent behind the channel. Honestly any channel with charismatic hosts is useless without them
Someone else brought up that the US just recently negated non-compete clauses - that was potentially what tipped the scales and allowed them to move on immediately
True, that was the only thing that could've prevented them from leaving. People want the interesting person, not some hollow brand name.
Except these are still valid in California where Donut is based...
@@mateuszburnicki6038wait do you not think the supreme court of the US has authority California?
@@W1ldSm1le FTCs final rule allows for more specific local enforcement including exceptions. It also excludes execs and some employees from the ban. it's down to each state to enact it how they like. Also it's the US so states can just not comply with feds. Most notably Cali has the sale of business exception, which can lock up places like Donut
@@mateuszburnicki6038 California never had non compete clauses though. They banned it since forever.
What’s cool is that not only Donut let them do the new channel announcement, that allowed the BigTime channel to get about 300k subs in two days. The first video they posted about the announcement got almost a million views in the first 24 hours.
That is what is amazing. A brand new channel, that many views and subs in such a short time just doesn’t happen unless it’s a second channel for an already established channel.
If they were not able to get the announcement out in Donut, they would still be trying to a couple thousand subs.
James left and only made his announcement now, and he’s able to get 5M+ views on his first video on his new channel and 800K+ subs when I watched him yesterday. His video was completely independent no announcements on donut or anything. This shows that the success of these new channels are dominantly from the support from the fanbase who love them for who they are. I guarantee you bigtime would’ve been just as successful if they didn’t announce their leave on donut
The Brazil video that Jobe hosted was absolutely incredible, I look forward to them getting to that pevel
Yeah, if they make THOSE types of videos, their channel will go insane (in a good way)
Its so sick to hear Linus and Luke be psyched for Bigtime, more cross-over car content with actual car channels would be rad.
Hope you get better😂 soon
Donut was really fun for a while and then it nose dived into super clickbaity garbage
I like the Mechanics React clickbait.
@@kstricl It's fun to watch but imo much lower effort than Up to Speed and the other series that made Donut popular. Donut back in the day was pretty educational on DIY, car brands, etc. Now, viewers can only take so much of the same low-effort videos over and over. Not to mention the Chinese EV test video seemed like pure marketing and not a review with genuine opinions.
Yeah. I stopped watching a couple years ago. It just wasnt the same vibe.
@@vitaminyi3359 It's absolutely low effort, no argument there. It was also done right by breaking it away from the main channel. Donuts main channel will survive in some form, but nothing has caught my eye to watch in a long time.
What killed me was their Miata build and the 350z high cost low cost builds.
Drove parts prices up for both of my cars.
The F1 channel/podcast WTF1 was, fairly early on, acquired by a bigger company. A year and a half ago, the founder and one of the other main hosts left and started their own channel and podcast (P1 with Matt and Tommy) which has gotten *much* bigger than things ever were at WTF1, with international live shows, shows on the big stages at races, etc. Their departure video on the original WTF1 channel was removed shortly after being put up, and they've talked about how limited they were at WTF1. Interesting ideas would get shot down, and from my perspective some of the RUclips content was pointless filler.
Things can also move the other way. Collegehumor was not doing well, people were getting laid off, it has been losing money for a while I believe. One of the higher-up people at that division (still very beholden to the media overlords) put in an offer to buy it, and it's not apparently profitable as Dropout. IIRC the new owner/CEO has talked about how there used to be pressure to chase trends to grow, instead of just establishing a good revenue stream and having slow sustainable growth.
One key part about Dropout is that he didn't really buy it. He basically just took ownership of the company (because it was down to seven people and going to close anyway). This gave him the channel (and their subs) as well as all the IP rights and stuff, but the owners also kept some share of the company (without any obligation to put in more money), so they are still making money now that Dropout is. He basically said to them "I think I can actually save this or evolve it into something that will work, give it to me instead of just closing it. If I make money, you'll get a cut, if not, you were going to close it anyway." They did have other offers to buy it, but rather than let someone external buy it for the quick cash (which wouldn't have covered their purchase anyway), they gave it to Sam to try to save since he was one of the last seven people they hadn't actually fired yet.
I assume re: Dropout, you mean it is *now* profitable - which it is! It’s not a huge cash cow, because they plow their profit back into new shows and treating their staff well.
Huh, I never expected to see mention of F1, let alone Tommy and Matt here. Good onya!
Quite sure WTF1 was under car throttle from the start
As soon as i saw about Donut/Big time, i thought of WTF1 (last upload 1 month ago) and how successful Matt and Tommy have gotten from their passion (2023 and 2024 Silverstone stage shows). Cant wait to see where big time goes!
LTT and Donut is a crossover I did not expect.
15:35 “it was sick i’d do it again” 😂 THAT Is the creative energy that made youtube what it is. And old music videos with anime footage
The folks at BigTime where in a Rush...
A Big Time Rush
I see what you did there!
uh uh oh oh oh 😮💨
I love that I'm not the only one who has tried to insert this pun somewhere lmao! bravo
That show was a banger lmao
@@DesocupadoXtremo profile pic matches the comment
Luke just looking at the views as if that's the only indicator of them doing well. People HAVE been complaining about them cutting beloved series and focused on trend chasing or "viral" formats that would garner a wider viewer base while forsaken what made people love it in the first place. YES, it has been around 3 years, but not all acquisitions cause IMMEDIATE noticeable turnover.
SMOSH was with DEFY Media until it was defunct (around 7 years ago), but during that time they still had high viewer count and people complained about a lot of their videos feeling like they were trend chasing. They admitted to being forced to produce stuff they didn't care for, not allowed to produce stuff they wanted to try or if it was allowed, heavily altered. SMOSH would unlikely to have survived if it wasn't for Ian doing his damnedest to keep it alive.
Rooster Teeth was bought by Fullscreen (around 10 years ago), and they still had high viewer count for many years after their acquisition. The turnover in personalities, plus the constant scandals, alienating their audience, degrading comments to anyone who criticized them, mismanagement from both Rooster Teeth and Fullscreen and whichever overlord they had at the time took the whole company down, but it took a lot for that to happen as well as taking years for it to collapse. If they had more of the original founders, hosts, and talents, they might have had the chance to survive.
3 years is NOTHING when it comes to what an acquisition can do to a channel/company, especially if it's focused on likeable hosts and personalities. So the fact it has been 3 years and that's supposed to mean the acquisition went well? There are plenty of cascading effects that as an audience we won't see and may never see. And perhaps the shows can carry themselves, but maybe not if people are more interested in hosts which tends to be the case.
The issue I and many others have had with donut is that the videos they made over the past years have went from well researched and unique content that’s educational to “let’s react to car products from TEMU!” A similar thing happened to hoonigan not too long ago, where they went from making varied quality content to basically they’ve only made This vs That and the occasional update on Lia Block’s racing career for almost the past year. Both channels still get a good amount of traffic, but the actual hype around the brands has completely fizzled out.
amen
Car throttle, Overdrive Media, Donut Media, a lot of "car content" become like react channels, only wachable content is "real mechanic reacts" but they drop in quality
Linus sponsoring another channel is awesome! That's so kind.
I love how Luke sets up the jenga box, closes it, then carefully presents it and opens it back up.
I don't think I have ever seen a channel go over a million subs so fast. And the massive views on the first vid. The chemistry was incredible and you can see the passion. I hope they do decide to take Linus up on the collab.
It's all overflow from donut. If they didn't have donut they would never have got that many that fast. Maybe even ever. The chemistry is the same as it was at donut no different. Relax
@@Spacepilot616 negative Nancy we all know the obvious of course coming from donut helped the quick growth. Thanks for the obvious and the snark at the same time. You must be amazing at parties.
@@gianni_schicchi. your post has far more snark than theirs.
Jeremiah and Jobe were my two favorite hosts on Donut. I would LOVE to see Justin and Nolan bug out and join them, too. I love those 4 guys.
Real shit
@@Billothy69 old pumphery
bro forgot about james 😢
@@imgladnotu9527 Nope. Don't really care for James.
@@CybrSlydr What's crazy is James is married to Jobe's sister. 😆
Acquisition changes aren't made overnight. It takes a long time analyze the current operation and then spend time afterwards to muck it up.
Exactly, depending on how lumbering the corporation is three years before things really start showing to the outside world isn't that long.
Also it gives time for people to forget it happened. If things changed overnight, many people would make the association and be outraged. If it happens slowly over time, people are much more likely to not notice. It's amazing how quickly people will forget things in just a few years.
Funhaus was the saddest for me
Yeah, it was by far my most favourite channel and they ran it into a wall
Big Time started their channel with what I hoped to see the most: project cars. Both videos, actually. Jerry bought a 70s truck, sick as hell, but also a little bit broken. I bet we will see some content fixing it, that would be great. They're taking what was the best thing about Donut. Jobe likes to fix and tune things, Jerry looks more like the vibe-guy. It's the perfect duo.
The negative comments didn't just start after Zach and Jer left. The Big Time announcement video basically confirmed what a lot of people have already suspected. Donut subscribers had long since noticed that Donut's "car reviews" were basically informercials.
MKBHD survived acquisition by Apple
😂
Show me the copy that check
the latest louis rossman video on that subject makes me want to say no
This 😂
So far.
Donut addressed a bit of this in their recent big three podcast as well but never mentioned anything about James yet
Is James gone too? I noticed it’s been a while since I’ve seen him in a video but I hadn’t heard anything
@@Danger_Dinguseveryone left IIRC
James is 100% out, he doesnt follow Donut anymore on insta.
He prob going on a hiatus but i have no doubt he wiil go to Big Time.
@@JxcksonSF yeah this seems to be the general consensus that he’s out and he’s been hinting at big announcements but on the donut underground discord one of the directors/producers apparently announced that he was just out of town for a huge shoot and even he said that in a comment on his instagram but it could be either way he might’ve gone for a really grand donut shoot (maybe which puts them on tv?) or he just left and this is all just red tape around his leaving
@@aditya1281he followed big time not donut. Probably meaning he supports their leave and maybe has done the same
The second you guys said you want to sponsor big time. I immediately subscribe to your channel seeing something like that and hearing it is just good culture in the community. I still support donut but I'm excited for big time. The guys put out a new video and it's amazing!
Did you hear about CarThrottle in the UK too? Like 6 hosts ended up leaving and setting up 3 new channels (Auto Alex, All The Gear & Top Dead Center)
Anyone who's been watching Donut since the beginning could see the transition after the acquisition. I started watching less and less of Donut over the last 3 years.
I was part of a company that sold to a private equity firm or something along those lines. We were told nothing would change. Things changed immediately and got worse and worse and worse. I left during Covid and that once successful company is now struggling to survive.
Donut still do some legitimately good stuff; the Baja Ranger build, the Laguna Seca lawsuit video, the Suzuki X90 restoration road trip, etc. But then half or more of their videos now are listicles and game shows. I do think there's still a spark of something great but the BS is drowning it out more and more
The BS stuff attracts the most views. Believe it or not, what the true fans find cringe, is what the masses on RUclips watch most.
Yeah what you're describing is a slow death versus a sudden death. Donut progressively got worse instead of suddenly being terrible.
@@JasonB808that is why they make that type of videos. The corporate only allows to make videos that attract views. So a passion project that could be hit or miss is disregard.
I only started watching them within the past year but I’ve noticed the same thing. Half of the videos are low-effort filler and the other half actually seem to have had a decent production effort going on. The thing is the filler videos get about the same views as the quality high-effort ones so I maybe the company thinks they should just keep making filler, even though it’s the quality videos that are probably retaining viewers.
Phillip Deframco survived an acquisition and then bought the channel back.
i left a company that was purchased like donut was, it took about 2 years for the new owners to ruin the company. private equity sucks.
Exactly, people don’t seem to realise that stuff like this takes time based on how private equity runs. Corporate generally run things fairly slowly and don’t take risks, base off numbers, reports etc.
The reason it was going to take so long for donut to fall was the nature of private equity, and why private equity bought channels are destined to fail due to this.
Watching someone slowly put a Jenga tower back together is unironically a fantastic way to maintain my attention span.
didn't even realize I did this until I saw your comment
Ikr. I was like, what the hell is he doing. Then he turned it around and I was like ohhh.
Yall are cooked if someone building a jenga tower is more than 10% of your attention span in this video. Holy
If it’s like any company I worked for that was bought out. They say it won’t change but after a year small changes start. Those add up to make huge changes.
Similar to what happened to WTF1 where the two main hosts left to do their own Chanel P1. Almost no views now ob the old one and the new one exploded in popularity
P1!!!
Yeah I don't understand it. Why would you buy one of these channels. Either you have no control over the content and keep the host\views, or you change the content and essentially destroy your investment. It makes literally no sense.
Love to see that P1 is on stage at silverstone in 2023 and 2024 while WTF1's last upload was a month ago
The Race bought WTF1. Matt and Tommy left. Started P1 with Matt and Tommy. P1 is doing great. WTF1 hasn't uploaded in over a month. During peak F1 season. They're effectively a dead channel now. The channel isn't what kept subscribers. The personalities and content is what sells. It's like Top Gear. People want Jezza, Hammond, and May. Anything else doesn't work. Boy did they sure try. TG is now dead dead.
@@tailsneon556 Guys from WTF1 get first step in infinity money glitch ....
Now they should try sell P1, create new channel, rince and repeat
Carthrottle is a prime example. Went from 1 channel to 3. and the channel itself basically died after the last 2 OG guys left. Now theres autoalex, all the gear and tdc and they all make great authentic content nowadays
I’ve been subscribed to Donut for years but I noticed I haven’t been watching their videos for much of the past year, maybe just a few? They just seemed to have more boring premises. But I’ve been watching Big Time and love it. Looking forward to seeing the sponsorship with LTT!!
Yes. They pulled punches. One of the creative team that left Donut made a more in depth video. AutoTea is the name of the channel. Basically, the new management made the cost structure of Donut so top heavy, that the management did what management does. They asked the creative team to do more with less, didn't understand how to incentivize creatives, stopped taking risks with content and stopped listening to the people who built what they bought.
Man I hate "growth" some executive wants to activate clauses in his contracts and trades the long term stability of the business for it
Perpetual growth is textbook business 101. Any publicly traded company needs to show quarterly and yearly percentage growth or it is considered to be failing, and from an investor perspective, that makes sense. The problem is that that model is unsustainable - it's simply not possible for a company to grow 5%, 10%, 20%, or whatever every year forever because at some point there just isn't any more money to make. And when a business inevitably hits its ceiling, all the investors and shareholders cash out, leaving the business crippled and 999 times out of 1000 it will soon collapse under its own weight.
The trading of long term stability is the whole point. Investors don't want a business that is stable long-term. They want it to get as big as possible as fast as possible so they can profit off of their investment as soon as possible. They don't care that these practices chew up promising young businesses that had the potential to stick around for a long time. All they care about is that they get their big fat paycheck at the end of the day.
@@Abion47 those aren't "investors" those are pump and dump scam artists... Keep to the crypto market if you think investors just look for quick bucks.
Investors believe in long term longevity... Why would they put money into a money making asset?
@butwhytharum If by long term longevity you mean they will stick with a company as long as it reports growth but will either pressure the owner into getting bought out at the earliest opportunity or bail the moment the ship appears to be sinking, then yes, you are correct. Otherwise, no, that's exactly how it works. How do you think these entrepreneurs and investment firms who can afford to dole out millions upon millions of dollars to promising start-ups got their obscene amounts of money in the first place? Because it sure wasn't by carefully nurturing local privately-owned businesses over 30 years that kept their identities while barely turning a profit.
@@Abion47 it's called financial leverage and gambling...
@@Abion47 next few years gonna be interesting with interest rates going up and these "expand at all costs" businesses being leveraged to high hell and back. Wonder if it's gonna pay off or we're gonna see lots of unemployment in the near future.
Yeah lets fuck!ng go, both of my favorite channels ''together''. Btw I agree with Luke, as a Brazilian 100 hours in Brazil car underground scene was a awesome video
I’m super excited for speeed too, now I have 3 channels to watch
The FTC Banning noncompete clauses in contracts probably had a big effect on this as well
Selling is what killed off rooster teeth
Not really. While RT death is unfortunate, I think people forget that the founders of RT wanted a ton of growth. They didn't like getting stuck just doing RVB. While RVB 0 was dumb and not great it's clear no one else wanted to do anything with RVB. People seem to forget that many artists don't care for stagnation. So doing the same things over and over again wasn't going to happen. If anything RT became a large company that still operated as a start up and that led to many problems down the road. I just doubt RT would have lasted that long without the sell off because it's clear the founders had a ton of ambitions that were unrealistic in their small status and hell they even were given a fair shake on those projects but were not really financially viable. For example it's clear they wanted to make TV shows as shown with day 5 and achievement haunter both were pitched as TV shows that no one picked up or their failed game studio.
They got their lucky break with RVB but many of their projects didn't go far. Really the only "original" thing with legs was RWBY and even that was pretty much a mish mash of anime tropes. The death of Monty Oum was a pretty big set back for that project but I do feel people deitify him and say RWBY turned bad because of his death but we need to remember Monty was never a story person. He did awesome scene to scene storytelling in his animation work but he didn't dig too much in the big picture and getting A to C. Was Monty sorely missed his fantastic animation direction but he was never there to make Shakespeare. He wanted to link badass fight scenes together basically.
Same thing happened with Hoonigan. They got bought out by Wheel Pros, and a lot of members left within a year or two. Not to mention the death of Ken Block. RUclips channels getting bought out never ends well.
It wasn't getting bought out that did it in for Hoonigan, it was WheelPros replacing their name with the Hoonigan brand and Ken Block's death caused the remaining talent to have a wake up call and leave
Sourcefed was a slow death brought on by corporate pressure, but there sister channel Sourced Nerd happened literally overnight.
The channel was bought by NowThis Media from the company that bought sourcefed, and NowThis literally fired all the hosts and writers and cancelled all the content they were producing. Replacing all the talent with new no-names that nobody cared about. And all this happened literally overnight.
Like there was a Sourcefed Nerd News video one day, and NowThis drops the "we enacted a hostile takeover of this channel" bombshell the very next day. Years later, Joe Beretta and a couple other hosts revealed that they weren't given any more lead time than the audience was. They had a staff meeting towards the end of the work day and there corporate overlords told them to go home and don't come back the day before the big reveal.
NowThis is the death of anything it gets involved in.
Here is the thing... When they buy a channel they want to install some of their people as boss that is going to have a large salary. But this person will not add anything to the channel growth. It's just a huge cost sink. So they have to save money elsewhere and they will save money on production and peroneal. This makes the channel suffer in the long run.
Linus' comments at 14:10 are really telling. I don't think it's possible to grow a youtube channel to 20+ employees without some kind of "corporate" influence. It's just a question of whether that stabilizing, money-protecting force comes from within or without. And I completely agree that growing up and doing it yourself preserves a lot more of the spirit of the original channel than selling out.
They definitely pulled punches.
Damn Great on Ya Linus! Never Shill out please we love your passion project!!
Kinda wild when Luke said people didnt care lol people definitely cared and it showed in the comments of multiple videos.
Also Hoonigan did the same thing. There was a channel in Australian similar to Smosh called "Yeah Mad" that recently made the same mistake.
Loud minorities are not a lot.
@@Tugela60 lol it was more people than just minorities wtf lol
@RandoWisLuL You only hear people making noise, and people who are happy with something don't make a lot of noise.
Just because someone posts angry comments 200 times a day does not make them a "majority".
@@Tugela60 I said nothing about the majority or the minority. You did.
Besides, it was across multiple platforms not just RUclips. If you look through such a narrow lens, then you would be correct but may many people had opinions on this topic.
The majority did put in their vote, technically. Viewership dropped 1.2 million views from one video to the next. You can see a clear line from where Jeremiah and Zach (and technically James) left and the next video. The next video dropped to half the views, the video after that is down to a quarter of the views.
The majority of people simply don't speak in general, not just the happy people. You see it in stats a lot of which are often driven by discussion and opinions of the people that do speak.
i love how luke is just assembling that wooden thing beside him while Linus is yapping about the main topic and he now and then throws in some stuff to talk about
same that happened with Hoonigan, it was one if not the most influential automotive channel in the last 10 years and in a matter of months died completely, ken block (RIP) passing away was just the last nail on the coffin because the company was sold a year before that but the crew was still commited to the channel and after that everyone just left
it would be helpful if you guys linked the mentioned videos in the description
Call tech support 😂
There's only one video on the BigTime channel
Zach and Jobe are in , my opinion, the best hosts donut had, and a lot of their first build series is what brought me to follow donut. As it stands right now, I dont see a reason to continue to following donut as most of their content is just bland and uninspired
I unsubbed Donut and subbed Bigtime as soon as their announcement video came out. I watched Donut for Zach and Jerry.
BART is the goat
Fr the first money pit series is what got me into donut in the first place and jeremiah is great at explaining stuff, those two imho were a large part of why donut got so big in the first place
Zach and jobe are the same person
Yeah just how i like james and pumphrey from donut and media
so cool to see media in a different category talk about another category i also enjoy, never thought in a million years that lmg would be discussing donut or bigtime
a lot of LMG employees are also big car guys. Linus himself while not really that much into car does express interest. There's the infamous one like Jake, but Luke here also is one
Linus stepping in and saying i want to sponsor bigtime is insane. i have always had a lot of respect for linus. but he has gained even more respect from me.
As a 10-year veteran Automotive Technician who's also getting his degree in Computer Science, this is the most solid crossover on youtube that I have EVER seen.
12:43 to quote the Captain from Wall-E "I DONT WANT TO SURVIVE, I WANNA LIVE!!!"
This is exactly what happened with @CarThrottle too, all the hosts left to make three of their own channels: @AutoalexCars @TopDeadC and @AllThe_Gear in exactly the saim style by the sounds of it. New owners stop doing the things that made the channel popular, economise the budget to make money, and everyone (staff, fans) leaves. The three new channels are doing well and Car Throttle now gets less than 50k views on a 3 million subscriber channel lol
Absolutely loving TDC and ATG, so glad they split.
To be fair, and I could be wrong, but I think Car Throttle was a company and website\magazine before the RUclips channel took on a life of its own. So it at least makes a little more sense that they had a bit more control of the content and stuff. Alex seemingly just worked there.
Was what I was thinking tho
@@SpartanArmy117 Yeah. Car Throttle changed hands several times. It only goes sideways when people that don't know what they are doing start messing with direction.
@@SpartanArmy117yes it was a website before but as I understand it Alex basically lead the video side of it as presenter from fairly early on, with support from the then owner. It certainly wouldn't be the size it (was) without the video production side and all the talent they had. It seems all three new channel hosts respected the old owner greatly, and they all say it changed when they got bought. Bought by same owners of WTF1 and that went into the toilet too.
oh nice!!! that is a great idea about sponsoring BIGTIME! good job Linus!
"It was sick, I'd do it again." Luke is such a CHAD
you guys are only wrong in saying that no one was complaining before. plenty of fans were complaining and it was very obvious when they were bought out. As a fan from the up to speed days, the shift from "we love cars" to "lets make clickbaity stuff to please the algorithm" was very VERY obvious
If LTT sold we would never get the return of Scrapyard wars. Change my mind.
Love what Linus was saying about the soul of the channel. I’ve had gripes with things Linus has said or done in the past but the content has always felt at the very least genuine and like the people making it wanted it to be good. And usually it is very good.
The episode I never expected lol. Love the donut crew and have been watching you guys for YEARS
Same thing happened to Matt and Tommy from WTF1. Some corporation bought them, changed the way they were doing things and they left and started their own thing.
Crazy how they already had over 1M subscribers by the time of their first video. Very loyal and active fans apparently.
As for people leaving, when places get bought it doesn't got to shit overnight. They make things worse and worse to maximize profits and folks working there want it to work and it isn't as though they have endless opportunities to jump to. So folks who are still there, likely would not be if they had another option. The other video mentioned covers the behind the scenes realities of multiple levels of corporate management and profit demands, which are harder due to all the new managers.
this video was so wholesome! Having Linus sponsor them, and having Luke say "I did it by myself, you didn't ask me to" genuinely speaks on how they are still a "team of broskis" doing fun stuff but with a lot of money behind it heheh