Channel Awesome
Channel Awesome, Inc. is an American online media production company based in Lombard, Illinois. The company was created in 2008 by Mike Michaud, Mike Ellis, and Bhargav Dronamraju. Channel Awesome operated the That Guy with the Glasses website until late 2014, when it was phased into the Channel Awesome website. The site is best known for the comedic film review series Nostalgia Critic, starring Doug Walker.
That Guy with the Glasses previously hosted fellow channels by Bar Fiesta, beginning in November 2009, and Blistered Thumbs, beginning in November 2010. Channel Awesome currently hosts a YouTube channel of the same name with an emphasis on content produced by Doug Walker and his brother Rob. All of Channel Awesome's content was hosted by Blip or YouTube prior to the former's shutdown in August 2015. After a series of scandals, nearly all affiliated creators severed ties with Channel Awesome and departed in April 2018.
Origins
Mike Michaud, Mike Ellis and Bhargav Dronamraju created Channel Awesome after they were laid off from Circuit City in 2007. The three discussed the idea of such a company while still employed, but their dismissal was the impetus to put their plans into action. Michaud has stated that "if didn't lose our jobs, wouldn't have happened anytime soon".At around the same time, Doug Walker began posting several satirical video reviews of films and other media on YouTube under the screen name of "Nostalgia Critic". Initially, Walker viewed making the videos as a side hobby, rarely interacting with his fans and not revealing his real name until a video responding to the Northern Illinois University shooting. Walker's channel had its content withdrawn from YouTube following complaints from 20th Century Fox and Lionsgate over alleged copyright infringement. Walker attempted to re-upload his content by assigning each video a new, separate channel. However, due to continuing issues, Walker decided to leave YouTube altogether and create the website That Guy with the Glasses, with Michaud acting as webmaster.
''That Guy with the Glasses''
That Guy with the Glasses was launched in April 2008. It showcased satirical reviews of movies, television shows, music, comic books and video games. The website was built around the work of Walker, including Nostalgia Critic, 5 Second Movies, Ask That Guy with the Glasses and Bum Reviews. Other videos and written articles were hosted on the site, including some minor series and sketches starring Walker. Videos were primarily hosted by Blip after problems with earlier provider Revver. The website featured videos from a number of other content creators who were steadily added as contributors over the course of several years.In December 2008, Walker appeared in a commercial for the PBS documentary Make 'Em Laugh: The Funny Business of America, performing a series of brief imitations of famous comedians, from Charlie Chaplin to Stephen Colbert. In 2009, Doug and Rob Walker, along with Brian Heinz, produced an iRiff of The Lion King for RiffTrax. In March 2009, the iRiff was chosen as the winner of the website's RiffTrax Presents contest. The performers received $1,000 and, with instruction from Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett, recorded a commentary for the film Batman Forever.
Nostalgia Critic averaged 100,000 to 300,000 viewers per week while on the site, and one million page views per month. This was expected to increase following Blip's deal with YouTube in July 2009. As of July 2009, the site earned more than $10,000 per month in advertising revenue and received more than $11,000 in online donations. In the third quarter of the 2009 fiscal year, Walker's shows earned $53,000, including $32,000 from Nostalgia Critic alone. This revenue was generated by run of network from Puma and Starburst. The success of his shows has allowed Walker to make a living performing and to quit his previous job as an illustrator, as well as pay the salary of Ellis, the site's co-founder and COO. The site was featured in Entrepreneur magazine in December 2009 where the history of the site was discussed as well as the plans for the future.
File:ChannelAwesomeTeamshot.jpg|thumb|300px|right|A "team shot" of Channel Awesome producers with the president of the Republic of Molossia Kevin Baugh, c. the 2010 filming of their 2nd anniversary feature-length special Kickassia
During 2011, Michaud was looking for warehouse space in suburban Chicago. He told The New York Times, "My company has a lot of growing up to do, but I believe that sometime in the next one to two years someone will create that one series that gets everyone talking... to the endless options of online video." As of June 2011, the company employed seven full-time staff. According to Walker, "these people are cheap to get because we are happy to see any amount of money". Channel Awesome's ability to attract a significant audience with a low expenditure was proclaimed to have an effect on video entertainment production.
The site gained a wealth of personalities and shows, quickly reaching twenty-plus. The first time the producers made an initiative to put each other in the same fictional universe was with their first anniversary video, which was a twenty-minute fight between each other, with set up and dialogue only stating it was video game reviewers vs. movie reviewers, egged on by the Nostalgia Critic and Angry Video Game Nerd rivalry that had been going at the time. A full-length site crossover movie was decided for the next year's anniversary. It ended up being a trilogy: Kickassia, which had the plot of the Critic getting a number of the personalities together to take over a micronation in Nevada called Molossia; Suburban Knights, where the Critic got together much of the same personalities to find a mystical gauntlet via forced LARPing; and To Boldly Flee, where the Critic and TGWTGs cast travel to space to stop a cosmic anomaly and fight corporate villains.
On June 28, 2012, Channel Awesome content producers Walker, Lindsay Ellis, Brad Jones and Todd Nathanson signed exclusivity deals with Blip, which directly hosted most TGWTG and Channel Awesome programming until it was shut down in August 2015. The deal did not affect the appearance of the producers' videos on TGWTG, and would assist the increase of budget of the four series, as well as provide technical improvements. An extension of this deal was a Blip-run YouTube channel called "League of Super Critics", which also uploaded the unedited videos of all four producers, with the exception of Jones, whose videos were edited down from the original version so that the only way one could see the full video was to go to Blip.
On December 3, 2014, the site shut down and rebranded itself as ChannelAwesome.com. The old URL redirected to ChannelAwesome.com until June 2018, where it now redirects to the Channel Awesome YouTube channel.
Subdivisions
Channel Awesome expressed plans to build on the success of That Guy with the Glasses with a network of subdivisions of the Channel Awesome website, including Bar Fiesta for covering Chicago entertainment and nightlife, and Inked Reality for anime and comic books. Blistered Thumbs began in 2009 as a subdivision of That Guy with the Glasses for housing its video game content. It gained popularity and Blistered Thumbs launched as its own website on November 4, 2010.Joe Vargas, already an established video game reviewer on That Guy with the Glasses, was the initial editor-in-chief. Staff writers were drawn from various websites including That Guy with the Glasses, TechRaptor and Normal Boots. Austin Yorski eventually replaced Vargas as editor-in-chief.
In late November 2014, the Blistered Thumbs website was shut down.
ChannelAwesome.com
The new Channel Awesome website debuted in late 2014. All content from TGWTG was relocated to the newly established ChannelAwesome.com. Each week there is a Spotlight Section to promote a website producer, as well as a Featured Blogger.In January 2015, four of the site's long-time associates departed, including Andrew Dickman, Kyle Kallgren, Allison Pregler and Phelan Porteous. Dickman, Porteous and Pregler went to being exclusively on Phelan's site, Phelous.com, while Kyle went to producing videos exclusively for Chez Apocalypse. Later that same month, Lindsay Ellis ended her long-running show The Nostalgia Chick, which had premiered as a companion show to Nostalgia Critic in September 2008. She intended to continue producing videos for League of Super Critics on YouTube and her own website, Chez Apocalypse.
Noah Antwiler, and his reviewer persona "The Spoony One", went to being exclusively on his site, The Spoony Experiment, a little before the fourth anniversary film, but still had a prominent role in it with his consent.
As of January 2024, the website has been deactivated, with the URL redirecting to the Channel Awesome YouTube channel where new content is instead being uploaded to.