Clownfish TV: Audio Edition
Anti-Gamer News Site Lost MILLIONS of Dollars!
The Daily Beast is a money-losing sinkhole of a website that was hours away from getting sold off to a private equity company. The site has a hate-on for gamers, having written several "anti" articles about Gamers, YouTubers and seemingly any other media that can’t be controlled by the mainstream. ➡️ Tip Jar and Fan Support: http://ClownfishSupport.com ➡️ Official Merch Store: http://ShopClownfish.com ➡️ Official Website: http://ClownfishTV.com ➡️ Audio Edition: https://open.spotify.com/show/6qJc5C6OkQkaZnGCeuVOD1 The Daily Beast, an anti-gamer news site, lost millions of dollars due to declining ad rates and readership, and is now aiming for profitability in 2026. 00:00 The Daily Beast lost money after attacking gamers, leading to a decline in viewers and potential sales of websites. 01:41 The Daily Beast lost $9 million and was almost sold to a private equity company, prompting questions about why it’s being propped up. 02:51 Anti-gamer news site lost millions of dollars due to declining ad rates and readership, prompting the need for changes in funding. 04:11 The Daily Beast almost sold to a private Equity company, but now they’re making cutbacks and aiming for profitability in 2026. 05:21 The anti-gamer news site lost millions of dollars due to overpaying freelancers, being overly political, and relying on venture capital that eventually ran out. 07:15 Media industry veterans were granted a stake in an anti-gamer news site to make it profitable, but tying pay to performance led to manipulation of view numbers. 08:22 The website lost millions of dollars due to buying traffic, losing ad networks, and pushing subscriptions and tip jars, as well as polarized content and fear of internet outrage. 10:04 Gaming news site lost millions of dollars, uncertain future due to industry survival until 2025. About Us: Clownfish TV is an independent, opinionated news and commentary channel that covers Entertainment and Tech from a consumer’s point of view. We talk about Gaming, Comics, Anime, TV, Movies, Animation and more. Hosted by Kneon and Geeky Sparkles. Disclaimer: This series is produced by Clownfish Studios and WebReef Media, and is part of ClownfishTV.com. Opinions expressed by our contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of our guests, affiliates, sponsors, or advertisers. ClownfishTV.com is an unofficial news source and has no connection to any company that we may cover. This channel and website and the content made available through this site are for educational, entertainment and informational purposes only. These so-called “fair uses” are permitted even if the use of the work would otherwise be infringing. #Games #Gamers #Media #News #Commentary #Reaction #Podcast #Comedy #Entertainment #Hollywood #PopCulture #Tech
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Hey, guys, this is the audio edition of Clownfish TV. If you guys are unfamiliar with Clownfish TV, please check out the video versions of these episodes on the Clownfish TV YouTube channel. And also on the Clownfish Gaming YouTube channel. Please subscribe for more podcasts. Check out D-Res. That's our other podcast. The episode will begin in a couple of seconds. Thanks for listening. Hey, guys, welcome back to Clownfish TV. This is Neon. I am here with Geeky Sparkles. And we're going to talk to you about the media. We're going to talk to you about the Daily Beast. Apparently, it is bleeding out money now. This is a far-left website that has published such hit pieces on gamers as video games are becoming a hotbed for dangerous propaganda. If you play video games that you're going to get indoctrinated into the alt-right, according to this, even if you play Minecraft. Yes, because that's terrible. Well, they think not just alt-right. They think the guy who made Minecraft's alt-right, everybody's alt-right that I don't like. Anybody, you know, right and far left is alt-right. So we're going to talk about this that doesn't surprise us at all. Does it surprise you? No. I mean, we've been covering this for the last, God probably two years on this channel now that, you know, all these media outlets, they're all crumbling. They're all decaying because they don't have enough viewers to, or enough readers to keep things going. And so they keep getting this, like, you know, infusion after infusion of venture capital. Now it's all running out. And I don't know what the end game is here because nobody's buying these websites. No. They really aren't. Or if they are, they're buying them for a song. So, let's talk about this before you get into it any further. Please subscribe for more pop culture news, views, and rants, guys. Get woo-hoo if you do. If only at work a taco. Yeah, well, give them time, give them time. So this is coming from the Hollywood Reporter. I got to give a hat tip to Vinny who sent this over. Hot source, hot source. Barry Diller spent millions to feed a dying beast. Shocker. The Belieger Daily Beast has been losing money. What's less known is just how much it's bleeding. And it's a lot. So they're talking about the layoffs, right? So the Daily Beast was on track to lose 9 million this year and was hours away from being sold to a private equity company, according to its new CEO and publisher Ben Sherwood who delivered these startling news to shell shock staffers during an all-hands call last week. Wow. 9 million dollars. That's in the grand scheme of things. It's not a lot of money, but, you know, where you say- Somebody said it was this guy, like, giving it money to prop it up? Yeah. Well, to what end? Like, why would- that's like throwing good money after bad. Like, why would you? I don't understand. I don't know. I don't understand why they're keeping these websites around. I mean, I think propaganda, I mean, we- That's, yeah. That's about the one thing I can think of. Well, we saw what happened to Jezebel, right? GeoMedia shut Jezebel down because they couldn't find a buyer and then I think it was PACE Magazine bought it and they decided they were going to try to resuscitate it as a political commentary, more even more political commentary. That's all I use it for. But I don't know how that's going to go for these websites because, you know, I can tell you again, as people who run websites, we're looking at the numbers, right? We're looking at the ad rates. And they're not good. Everybody's taking their money and they're pushing it into video and they're pushing it into podcasts or pushing it everywhere but to these websites in no way is reading them. And now Google is coming in and just taking, you know, AI snippets and giving people search results that way. So I don't know why you'd keep plow money into a dying website. So yeah, when we arrived in April, he said the company was set to lose nine million this year. Sherwood told staffers on Monday to put that differently. It was on track to spend nine million more than the revenue it was bringing in. That's nine million dollars in losses on top of many millions and millions of losses in previous years and even more losses, tens of millions in projected years ahead. But why? I know. Why would you do it? I mean, they're all running in a loss like this. That's the thing. If I was somebody who had investing, who had investments in this, I'd be like asking questions like, what the heck? Wow. As you know, Barry, Barry Diller, as you know, Barry Diller and IAC have always believed in the beast. They have always funded it for a variety of reasons. Diller and IAC decided they need to make changes because they're losing too much money. And as you probably heard or probably will read, there's a plan to sell the daily beast to a private equity company, which would have in turn laid off almost everybody at the company. But they didn't sell it. They didn't. Okay. That almost happened. In fact, it was hours away from happening. So it's so bad at the daily beast that they almost sold it to a private equity company. I would say most of these websites are being propped up by private equity companies now. But what saved it then? I don't know. They said, as hot source first reported, the new leadership has had a rocky start. They said, we're having conversations with people. I wanted to be respectful of those conversations. We're moving as fast as we can on the front, trying to get some money rolling in. Sherwood said in the call of thanks to cutbacks and buyouts, the beast is now in track to break even next year. Oh, and they need hit profitability in 2026 and 2026 buyouts and cutbacks. Yeah. So it went to almost selling to an investment place or whatever, and they were hours away. And now all of a sudden they're making cuts and it's going to be profitable in a couple years. This really seems weird. The site has been operating with the help of freelancers and contractors. Are they paid? The overall crew will be smaller as the finances simply don't support the size of the staff. This is the biggest problem with a lot of these websites, right? They think their newspapers from 1975. They think that they've got this, they want this full newsroom and these people are leaving journalism college working for one of these websites and they think that they should be paid six figures. Yeah. That's true. I'm like, I would be surprised if these sites were not making six figures every month. Yeah, they're not even paying your salary. And there's like how many people that want a six figure gig? Like Buzzfeed was paying people, I think it was over a hundred thousand, a year, a hundred and fifty thousand a year to just write fluff articles about video games and politics and listicles and garbage like that. And it's like, yeah, so what are you guys are broke? I mean, it's just, so it's about a culture of trust around the table where we have meetings, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, you got to tell people the truth. Oh, yeah. Okay. Sure. The other thing that is they, you know, were very politically, they literally didn't politically left. They were very, very overly political there as other sites that were doing the same thing. I think overly political either way are starting to find out that advertising money and stuff are drying up and people don't want overly politicized stuff and they weren't getting views. They almost got sold out, but then they realized that if we make cuts, we can keep the business going, which would have been the first thing they would have done before you'd sell it to somebody else. And it seems like a lot of incompetence the whole way around, like they even know what they're doing. No, basically they thought the venture capital was never going to run out. I think they thought it was never going to run out. And anytime the site would get low on money, they'd be like, oh, here, we'll just hold our hands out and somebody will just shit another, you know, $25 million in your bank account. What's interesting though is that he said that he tapped these media industry veterans, but they are, he, they granted them a stake in the outlet. So what they're doing is they're going to make it profitable because they have a vested interest. When you've a vested interest financially, you're going to do what you can to make money. Right. So maybe people are being paid to write articles. They don't care. They get paid either way. No, they don't care. I mean, that's the thing. Maybe they should tie their pay to their performance, but then what happens is, and this has happened to a lot of these, these pop culture outlets where they would give view bonuses and then people would manipulate the numbers to get it. Oh, yeah. People would buy fake traffic. They would buy fake traffic to get those. Oh, look, I got all these views. And this is going to happen. Oh, look. Oh, oh, it's going to pick up. We're at 7 p.m. tonight. Exactly. 7 p.m. tonight. My article is going to take off. And there's going to be three a.m. There's going to be hundreds of thousands of views, you know, six, eight, eight, five a.m. And everybody in the U.S. mostly in bed, hundreds of thousands of views come in, but it was completely coincidental. All U.S. traffic all to that article, you know, they didn't go to the base page for anything Google or anything. It is right to that article. Not speaking from experience or anything. Not speaking from. No, they didn't have anybody do that before. Yeah. Never had to let anybody go for doing that now, but this is why we do no longer offer performance bonuses. Yeah, it incentivizes people to do that. And, you know, I mean, you gamble with that. And that's, that's all I'm wondering. You know, some of these websites, have they been buying traffic? Have they been gambling and losing and then maybe losing their ad networks and having to try to sell ads on their own or, you know, I'm saying, like there are a lot of things that probably going on behind the scenes that we're not seeing and more and more. I'm seeing every one of these websites push subscriptions, tip jars, you know, all this stuff. I'm seeing the young Turks to YT there, like every video now, they're like, Hey, go to our website. Give us some money. You know, it's like everybody even in the video space, like everybody's hurting for money now. That's because advertising just fell the clip. Because yeah, the economy sucks. And, you know, just everything's so polarized that a lot of advertisers are afraid to advertise here because they're afraid they're going to tick off that audience, they're going to tick off that audience. They're just going to go put it on, you know, videos or like more radio or something like that. People were going to see it or hear it and they don't have to worry about it, like ticking off people because it's not this far left side or far right side or whatever. Also happens because, you know, when the advertisers advertise on, on any, by, you know, any site or, or, you know, video or channel or podcast or whatever that's more politically charged, you've always got the internet outrage mob. Yeah. We're going to go. We're going to complain. Yeah. We're going to take your money away. It's just it is what it is. The power of complaint. That's what we have. The power complaint compels you. Anyway, we're going to wrap this up. Yeah. So we're going to see a lot of this guys. Just, I mean, this, I don't know what things are going to look like next year because I was doing another video doing a gaming news roundup on the, the other channel on the podcast. And everybody's mantra now in every industry is survive until 25 because they think things are going to get better next year, maybe, but I'm like, I don't know who's going to be left. I don't know what's going to look like. I don't know how election goes personally, but we'll see probably. So let's wrap this up. Yeah. Please subscribe. We'll talk later. Bye. Thanks again for listening. More news and videos are available on our website at www.clownfishtv.com and on our YouTube channel, clownfishtv. 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