Yahoo loses on Community, where to now…?
Yahoo loses $42m, unable to monetise its online original shows, raising questions about future for Joel McHale comedy.
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under Streaming
The outlook for Community is not so promising with reports today that Yahoo lost $42m on it -along with original series Sin City Saints and Other Space– as it couldn’t effectively monetise programming.
“We thought long and hard about it, and what we concluded is (for) certain of our original video (series), we couldn’t see a way to make money over time,”CFO Ken Goldman said.
“We’re not saying we’re not going to do these at all in the future. But what we are saying is, in three cases at least, it didn’t work the way we had hoped it to work, and we’ve decided to move on.”
Creator Dan Harmon has recently said without chief marketing officer Kathy Savitt, who championed the show within Yahoo, it may struggle. Savitt has joined independent studio STX Entertainment as president of its digital unit. In August Joel McHale also said, “There is just not enough money to be able to pay for the show” before back-tracking on its demise.
Yahoo picked up Community after the show was axed at five seasons.
However Variety reports that a Community movie is still in play — with or without Yahoo.
Community‘s most recent season premiered in Australia on Stan.
Sin City Saints and Other Space are both on PLUS7.
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2 Responses
The show had a rough life and took many knocks over the last few seasons with some cast members coming and going. However I did quite enjoy the most recent season.
Also I feel the reporting of the story across the news has been a bit misleading. The failure was Yahoo! didn’t know or failed to properly monetize their launch into TV. Not that the show failed to bring in viewers. While figures were never released, as they never are for these streaming platforms. Apparently they were very happy with the figures. The sponsor was very happy. With show creator Dan Harmon saying things like he felt vindicated because the figures showed there was a much bigger audience all along than the TV ratings show suggested.
So if the only reports we have on the ratings is that more people watched this online that the ratings it got on TV. Don’t blame Community.
Seasons 1&2 of Community are amongst my all time favorite shows. Started losing its way in season 3. 4 was a chore and I left watching season 5 mid episode, half way through the season and havent returned.