Disney cuts ties with YouTube's biggest star PewDiePie over anti-Semitic clips as Disney also announces another round of layoff at its embattled Maker Studios

Disney's Maker Studios has cut ties with YouTube superstar PewDiePie after
he posted several clips with alleged anti-Semitic imagery
Disney-owned Maker Studios and Alphabet's YouTube have distanced themselves from their biggest video star to date, PewDiePie, the online alter ego of a Swedish YouTuber named Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, after they found out he had posted several videos with alleged anti-Semitic imagery on his popular YouTube channel.

The announcements came after the Wall Street Journal reported that PewDiePie had posted at least nine video clips with alleged anti-Semitic and supposedly Nazi imagery on his YouTube channel since last August.

The embattled Maker Studios, which is the top YouTube-based video supplier and multi-channel network on the popular Alphabet-owned streaming video website had, at one point, "thousands" of YouTube channels signed under its label, generated over 5.5 billion views per month, and earned over 380 million subscribers.


The upstart internet-based video content studio, Maker Studios, was acquired by Disney in March of 2014 for half a billion dollars with additional financial incentives to the studio's management to pay out an additional $450 million, if certain growth and performance targets were met within a year's time for a total potential payout of $950 million.

One of the controversial images showed two paid actors in India holding up a
sign that read, 'Death to all Jews"
But when the studio failed to met those goals in 2015, Disney forced a series of shake-ups in Maker Studio's top management and layoffs at the YouTube-based multi-channel network.

The final price tag for the digital media business was $675 million, coming well short of its near $1 billion potential payout by Disney.

Disney had originally intended to largely leave Maker alone when it came to creative control over producing video content on Maker's network of YouTube channels; however, in the subsequent two and half years under its control, Disney has, instead, tightened its grip over what content could be published by the formerly independent YouTube video content producer.
   

Needless to say, it's gotten a lot more "politcally correct" over at Maker Studios since its acquisition by the family entertainment powerhouse, which would fully explain PewDiePie's recent and unceremonious ouster from Maker Studios.


In December, Disney completed the complete takeover of Maker Studios by folding it into its now struggling consumer products & interactive media segment.

PewDiePie in a so-called Nazi uniform—really!?!
The second executive in charge of the studio in as many years, Courtney Holt, stepped down from his role leading Maker and stepped into a whole new role as vice president of media & strategy elsewhere inside of Disney corporate structure, reporting now to Disney's chief strategy officer, Kevin Mayer.

Many believe, after this move, Maker Studios has completely "sold out" and gone "fully corporate" in its values and mission as a creative video content producer on the internet under Disney's heavy-handed thumb.

Thus, heads are rolling again inside Maker Studios over creative control and artist direction of the once edgy and irrevent YouTube-based network.

In this latest move by Disney to trim the fat, Maker Studios is now bracing for another significant round of layoffs ordered from the top brass in Burbank.

Disney expects to shrink the size of Maker's current network of thousands of video creators to just around 300, according inside sources reporting to the Hollywood Reporter.
  
      
The cuts at Maker Studios will largely come by not renewing deals with many of its existing smaller partners. Instead, Maker will be refocusing only only its top-tier online video artists and producers who have large YouTube followings and proven track records as YouTube artists.


That strategy seems at odds with Disney's latest decision to cut all ties with its most successful YouTube channel to date, PewDiePie, the most subscribed channel on YouTube by far, who was and is still considered a key and integral part of Maker Studios' success.

PewDiePie with Jesus saying Hitler did absolutely nothing wrong
Thus, it seems the layoffs are more about reigning in the type of political views, content and speech that the Mouse doesn't agree with, rather than supporting creators who are merely held to the objective standard of being commercially successful and proven commodities on YouTube.

It's still unclear how PewDiePie's controversial and sudden departure from Maker's network will impact the studio's bottom line, or how it will affect their future business.

“Although Felix has created a following by being provocative and irreverent," a Maker spokesperson said in a prepared statement approved by Disney corporate offices, "he clearly went too far in this case and the resulting videos are inappropriate. Maker Studios has made the decision to end our affiliation with him going forward.”

In one of the controversial videos in question, Kjellberg had paid two men in India, through a crowd-sourcing platform, to hold up a provocative and offensive sign that read, "Death to all Jews!"


In another video, Kjellberg featured an actor dressed as Jesus Christ saying, "Hitler did absolutely nothing wrong."

No one really expects perfect judgment from a guy like this
While in other videos, Kjellberg dressed in a military uniform that kind of resembled a Nazi uniform which stirred some obvious controversy as well.

No doubt, the clips are inappropriate and childish in nature, but to instantly label a young man with no clear intent of being hateful as being racist and ban him seems a bit extreme, even in today's modern PC world, given the irreverent and edgy nature of his humor he had demonstrated in the past on his channel.

This appears to be a case of the PC police from the liberal left going a bit overboard in their reaction to someone, who was just trying too hard to entertain or appear to be provocative and edgy to his intended audience.


After all, even Godwin's law predicts that any sort of discourse on the internet, if it goes on long enough, will eventually deteriorate into something about the Nazis and Adolf Hitler.


In Kjellberg own defense, he said the clips were meant as an irreverent joke, not to be taken as a serious political statement or commentary about hate speech. PewDiePie has since taken responsibility and removed those offending videos and apologized for the misunderstanding, but not before they racked up some 23 million views.

Disney's interjection of politics seems to be the reason why many people are
tuning out their media networks channels and internet streaming offerings
“I think it’s important to say something, and I want to make one thing clear: I am in no way supporting any kind of hateful attitudes,” Kjellberg said in response. “Though this was not my intention, I understand that these jokes were ultimately offensive.”

Apparently, the apology from the 27-year-old white Aryan Swede was not enough for Disney's or Google's top brass.

Disney forced Maker Studios to cut all ties with PewDiePie on Monday, while YouTube announce on Tuesday that it had canceled the release of the upcoming second season of the YouTube series, Scare PewDiePie and dropped him from its premier advertising program, Google Preferred, which offered advertisers access to aggregated bundles of its most popular channels.


With 53 million subscribers and nearly 14.7 billion views, PewDiePie has amassed the biggest following, by far, of anyone on YouTube by consistently posting irreverent video clips of himself playing and talking about video gamers with his off-the-wall and irreverent sense of humor.


Forbes estimated that PewDiePie earned more than $15 million last year with video royalties, book deals, and his series on YouTube Red, Google's paid streaming video subscription service which offered ad-free viewing among other benefits for a price to viewers.

Why is everything on all of Disney's media outlets all about politics of late?
Herein lies with problem with Disney (and not just with Maker Studios): it appears they are trying to force feed audiences with their own particular brand of "progressive liberal" politics, even when all the viewer ever wanted is just to be entertained without being talked down to or lectured at from the morality and PC police.

You can clearly see that Disney's not-so-obvious political agenda is now being interjected into its movies, TV shows, and even live sports broadcasts, which is now turning people off to watch anything from the House of Mouse, when all they really want to do is to tune out and be entertained with some form of escapism for an hour or two from the harsh realities of life.

All we can say is this: no wonder Disney is having so much trouble with dropping viewerships, declining attendance numbers, and paid subscriptions to most of its entertainment divisions and segments, including live sporting events on ESPN and YouTube videos from Maker Studios.


With its obsession to interject politics and political correctness in all its entertainment offerings, it's turning most people off from watching, much like it would if politics were interjected without any rhyme or reason on an airline flight. (I wonder if that's ever happened?)


Sources:

Comments

Post a Comment