I worked for them - I'm Steven. Curly haired bearded one. Aka EsteemedKompany on twitter/youtube. It's basically ended. Kind of. Not really. Unofficially. It'll still have videos after home games, but it'll be that stripped back for some time now I think unless the funding comes back. Its entirely a funding situation and nowt else. It's a long story so I'll have to explain the background:
The channel is part of The Football Republic. A network of channels set up by Shotglass media who are a small production company inside of Fremantle Media. A very big production company.
The channels involved were the United one (full time devils), Chelsea one (Chelsea fan tv), Spurs one (spurred on), a Barca one and a Real Madrid one. Plus The Football Republic, a generic one. All the channels were run by huge fans and hired for that reason. Same reason I was hired. If I'm being honest I totally stumbled into it cos I wrote blogs that were quite popular and cos I was relatively comfortable in front of camera.
I couldn't believe my luck that someone was willing to pay me full-time to create and produce content/videos/social media stuff all day about football. Landed on my feet tbh and I absolutely loved it. I only worked there from March 16 till Jan 17 but it was probably the best job I've ever had. Sadly though, cos of the way things work when there's a big corporation involved, there were growth targets. The bigwigs above Shotglass media decided to cut most of the funding and restructure it due to not hitting the growth they wanted. This effectively meant the end of the Spurs, Real Madrid and Barca channels full stop. The City (BMRTV) and Chelsea (Chelsea Fan TV) ones were meant to keep going in a stripped basis but the chelsea presenters basically pulled the channel to pieces live in one vide, said they'd all been sacked live on air and it died almost immediately over night. Interesting.
Us at BMRTV had a little more maturity and we tried to keep it going. Effectively though, the two of us running it full time (myself and my mate who now works for city tv - the rest were just contributors) were let go. Naturally we weren't going to then do work for free for a big company who had previously paid us - who would? I don't have any ownership of it all and would be basically working for a massive company for nowt. Hence why I set up my own channel.
There is still a tiny, tiny bit of funding going and I think they're still paying a little to one of the lads to hopefully keep it going this season, starting after the everton game. The good thing about being owned by a big company was that they always made sure that any regular contributors got paid, which I think was fair, but the flipside of that was then the second the money ended most of us all just disappeared and pursued our own interests. I think that's entirely fair enough. No one works for free for the same people who used to pay you as its very time consuming and fremantle can afford to pay people, they just dont want to anymore.
Weirdly, if it was the other way around I'd have had no problem working for free. I.e - if i'd started off working for free without any previous preconceptions of it being a job, id not have been arsed, and any money after that would have been a bonus. As it is, now it'd feel like a massive demotion. I definitely missed making videos though and made my own channel and I don't regret it tbh. It's incredibly fun and it's nice to be able to do videos when I want whenever I want.
So long story short: it was entirely a business decision that went above the heads of the lads who presented it. None of us had any say at all really in the future of it. Shame as we're all massive blues...but that's the downside of it all. We can't 'buy' it off them either as some have suggested - they wont sell as its a valuable marketing/sales asset for Shotglass media to be able to say 'we've got a city channel with 40k subs and 100k page likes on FB' sadly! Business hey...its a twat.
The honest truth of it is that BMRTV struggled to grow despite the quality (and im biased) of the videos. We had a really hardcore fanbase and engaged audience (sorry, was my job to know that) but we simply didnt have the numbers. The United channel does so it still exists and has funding. It's got 300k subs. They're big. Arsenal have a bigger fanbase too, and also the comedy factor of other fans watching it cos their fans are aboslutely mental, and Liverpool's Red Men TV channel have a big audience too. More fans....I really hate to hammer home a stereotype here, but we're just smaller. You can see where the views come from, and we're so, so localised compared to those other clubs. We don't have the huge overseas support....yet. So the channel couldn't keep going in the same model that it was. If it wasnt financed it could but if you're gonna live by the sword..m etc
For me though, working on my own, it's great. I make a tiny bit of money of it, which is nice, but most importantly I can do whatever I want when I want for no costs really apart from a couple of hours a night here and there. Fan channels are ultimately a weird one, but I'd not change last year for anything personally. Paul, Elliot, Walter and Alex are genuinely fucking top blokes and it was great making videos alongside them. There is a small chance it could get back to where it was, but it may take some time. Fingers crossed it gets there as i really value youtube and its a great place for unsanitised stuff. The channel changed my life too and i made some great friends so i hope it does get back. Fingers crossed.
If no one can be arsed reading all that, and id suggest doing so cos its clearer, this video i made on my channel explains it a little simpler.
