Okay, so here's some of my current thoughts on all this Channel Awesome crap. . . .
So, first of all, with all of these complaints about how Doug is pretty much the mascot and the face of the company . . . I guess I saw some foreshadowing of this without realizing it, because I'm thinking now on the current CA YouTube Channel Trailer, that's basically Doug saying, "This channel is all about me, and there are other people on this channel who are not me, but we know you're really only here to see me." I think this is why I found the management confusing, because I remember wondering how it was that Doug had a boss he worked for when I thought he was the boss. But based on some of this information pouring out from former producers and contributors, it sounds like Doug (and Rob) has way too much clout and say than he should.
And I guess I stand corrected regarding Doug and his talent (or lack thereof). I did actually used to say I found he was one of the few internet celebrities with any actual talent, and to painfully honest with you guys, a good majority of my own producing work in recent years comes from "tips" I learned from watching some of his behind-the-scenes videos, like that Making of Nostalgia Critic special he did when he was reviewing DOOMSDAY MACHINE . . . I even confess that the main reason I chose to go with Adobe Premiere for editing, and get myself a Sony AVCHD handycam to film my work with is because they were what he used (and, in fact, my handycam is a much lower model of what he used to use - I can't even find his model commercially, and even on Amazon, it usually runs $400-$600 in used condition) . . . I mean, he made it all sound like he knew what he was talking about, and I'm sure he did with the confines of filming with a handycam and editing on Adobe Premiere, but nothing else. When he "joked" about unprofessional he was, he really wasn't kidding - he really is unprofessional, in a bad way. Granted, I actually never really took the time to watch any of his non-Nostalgia Critic work, but based on what I'm seeing from other YouTubers commenting on this work, such as those anniversary movies that he did, he apparently had absolutely no sense of producing/production work, his writing was hackneyed plagerism, his directing was telling everyone to do it the way he would do it, and the movies themselves were basically all ego strokes for him. So . . . not sure what it is about him I had been mistaking for talent, but. . . .
And there's also the issue that supposedly Doug isn't even doing any of this because he's simply an unprofessional egomaniac, but that he's doing it because he's basically Mike Michaud's puppet. As bad as this guy seems to be as a CEO (given that there's accusations against him basically being an arrogant, cheauvanistic, lazy, money-hungry slob), it kind of makes me wonder whatever happened to that Bargo guy who was supposedly the head honcho of the company back in its glory days? And speaking of cheauvanism and mysogyny, it would seem that the whole #MeToo movement can even apply to CA, because an unidentified former female producer has come forward and said an unspecified higher up at CA basically sexually groomed her, and that she didn't even realize she was being groomed until she found said unspecified higher up in possession of child predatory material, and that basically everything he did to her came from this material. I guess that's something else that's foreshadowing, considering I remember NOstalgia Critic once remarking, "Abuse to women is funny." Not to mention in one of those anniversary movies, there apparently was meant to be a full-on rape scene with Nostalgia Chick. Y'know, because rape is funny!
And that finally brings me to my closing remark, which is something we've discuss before in other threads regarding the likes of Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, and others, and that's separating the art from the artist. Now, honestly, I wasn't really die-hard into Channel Awesome like a lot of people were, and like Shane mentioned before, I honestly really only watched Nostalgia Critic episodes where the shows or movies he reviewed were shows and movies I had seen and was familiar with . . . and, to be perfectly honest, all that's come to light recently about CA really doesn't change my enjoyment of older/classic Nostagia Critic (since much of it was back in the pre-CA TGWTG days). So, I can definitely separate the art from the artist, because while my thoughts on (classic) Nostalgia Critic remains unchanged, my thoughts and opinions of Doug don't. I can separate the Nostalgia Critic character from Doug Walker to a degree - I still enjoy the screaming, tormented internet reviewer whose been a major part of my internet life for a good many of years, but I no longer see Doug Walker as the talented internet entrepeneur I once did.