The conservative media company that right-wing commentator Steven Crowder blasted over an employment offer earlier this week, claiming the proposal had “immoral terms that actually punish conservative content creators on behalf of Big tech,” has identified itself as the Daily Wire.
On Tuesday, Crowder, who has long been demonetized on YouTube, posted a 28-minute video to his channel eviscerating the terms of an employment offer from a Conservative media company, though he did not name the organization.
“I went into free agency, I looked over the offers, and I saw the claws come out,” Crowder said. “And I don’t just mean unreasonable demands for control, but what I would argue are immoral terms that actually punish conservative content creators on behalf of Big Tech.”
Crowder’s video, in which he goes over penalties embedded in the contract, went viral, and speculation ensued among social media users as to what company put forward the offer.
On Wednesday, Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing responded to Crowder with a 52-minute video defending the “opening offer,” which he revealed to be a four-year deal worth fifty million dollars, with a company option at the term’s end to renew the deal for another two years at twenty-five million dollars. The $50 million over four years is referred to as the “Fee.” In exchange, Crowder would have to produce “daily,” “monthly,” “quarterly,” and “annual” content.
Regarding daily content, Crowder would be responsible for creating four 90-minute shows a week, including 60 minutes without a paywall and another 30 minutes behind one, for a total of 192 episodes per year once vacation is factored in.
He would also have to produce a 90-minute “All Access Live Member Q/A” each month, as well as a quarterly promotional shoot. Finally, he would have been responsible for delivering one “feature-length entertainment special” per year, such as a documentary or stand-up comedy special, as Boreing noted. Funding for this would have come from the Daily Wire rather than the “Fee.”
“The amount of content required is not in-line with – frankly, its worse than Disney, its worse than ABC, its worse than NBC, its worse than CBS,” Crowder said Tuesday. “This is ownership of you and everything that you do.”
Penalties for reduction of the Fee due to “BOYCOTTS, CONTENT STRIKES, OR BANS FROM MAJOR SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS,” failing to meet content output, as well as stipulations over rights to handle his own social media accounts, were areas of contention for Crowder, who told up-and-coming conservative content creators, “don’t sign these contracts.”
The document read in part:
Ad Drop. If Crowder is boycotted or dropped by more than 50% of his then extant advertising partners (that is, 50 percent of the revenue from those partners) and the company is not able to replace them withing 90 days, then the Fee will be reduced 25% until such time as that ad revenue has been restored for a period of 90 days.
Content Strike. If any of the major plaforms (e.g. YoutTube, Facebook, Apple Podcasts, Spotify) issues a content strike (other than a “companywide” content strike) such that the Crowder content cannot be monetized on such platform, and the compaany is not able to resolve the issue within 90 days, then the fee will be reduced by 25 percent from that point forward.
Additionally, if Crowder is banned from YouTube or Apple Podcast, the fee will be reduced by 20 percent for each instance, while it would be reduced by 10 percent for bans on Facebook and Spotify.
Crowder asserted that the boycott stipulation sends the message, “Hey liberals, boycotts work. They work on our guys. We’ll punish them for you.”
Boreing pushed back, stating ‘”this isn’t about punishing the content creator.”
“This is about if the Daily Wire is going to leverage… probably $100 million by the time you have marketing, infrastructure costs, by the time you pay for all the legal compliance, all technology that it takes to support Steven’s show, and Steven’s show even at the price that we offered for it,” he added.
“If the show makes dramatically less money, well, then Steven has to make less money because we’re making less money,” Boreing continued.
The CEO also took a dig at Crowder, claiming he is “not looking for a business relationship he’s looking for a benefactor,” in addition to complementing his influence on the right and encouraging viewers to subscribe to Crowder’s “Mug Club Forever.” He also noted that he expected the “Fee” to Crowder to increase by the end of the negotiation, while he believed the penalties would have been made smaller.
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