For anyone who cares, I actually took the time to read the entire report/decision by the arbitrator. Actually was fairly interesting, and I learned some more.
First off, Steyn didn't win $4 million. A number of judgments were entered against CRTV, which added up to approximately $4 million.
These were:
1) $1.8 million + 9% interest (between February 2017 and whenever Steyn is paid) to Mark Steyn, for breach of contract. This was calculated because Steyn was to draw a $800k/year salary starting from July 31, 2016, and CRTV had no right to opt out of the contract until July 1, 2019. This meant they were on the hook for $2.4 million to Steyn, but $600k had already been paid to him, hence the $1.8 million figure.
2) Oak Hill Media, a third party company hired to help produce Steyn's show, was awarded $908,124 with that same 9% interest. This was a complicated calculation I won't bother getting into.
3) Attorney's fees of $1,012,729 were awarded to Steyn and Oak Hill for prevailing on this case. As usual, the lawyers got rich.
4) As a final kick in the ass to Katz, $76,575 was also awarded to Steyn to reimburse him for his share of what he paid the Arbitrator (lol).
Now... as far as what actually happened...
In short, both sides were at fault for the failure of the Mark Steyn show, but it seems that more of the fault was on CRTV's end.
Steyn was to be paid $800k/year to produce 200 daily shows per year of a minimum length of 48 minutes each (that's 4 shows per wekk, with two weeks of vacation). He was the one placed in charge of creating the content and overseeing its production.
However, CRTV was responsible for providing Steyn with an advanced, fully function, TV-quality set, as well as furnishing him a production team.
The problem involved the studio itself, based in Burlington, Vermont. By all accounts, the studio was beautiful and state-of-the-art.
Unfortunately, it was riddled with horrible technical bugs/issues, and was also way behind schedule on construction and implementation of planned features.
Both sides agree that CRTV lavishly spent on the studio, which was built from the ground up. Steyn was given a virtually unlimited budget for this. However, construction of the studio was way behind schedule.
Furthermore, Steyn took an approved trip to Europe over the summer of 2016, and CRTV hired Steyn an underling to manage staffing for the show while he was gone. That underling, recommended by Steyn and wooed away from Fox Business by Katz himself, was completely incompetent, and failed in all ways. That even caused further delays.
In October 2016, Katz realized that the planned Steyn show -- meant to be the centerpiece of CRTV -- had fail written all over it. He wrote an e-mail to CRTV executives advising them to get Steven Crowder (whose show had not transitioned to CRTV yet) ready to take over as a quick replacement, if things went south with Steyn.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cary Katz
You need to speed up the development of this show we will need to get [Crowder] up and running fast if Steyn screws us. I hate to even
write that, but we have to be prepared for a worst case scenario.
The incomplete Burlington studio ended up being the main reason for the demise of the Mark Steyn show.
On November 29, 2016, the studio apparently still didn't have its flooring and lighting completed.
While they started to use it in December, it was inadequate for the production of a highly complex show like Steyn's. The multiple cameras were not fully installed, the advanced editing suite was constantly crashing and basically unusable, and an 80-inch, high definition monitor behind Steyn -- meant to be a focal point of the show -- was both incomplete and buggy. The monitor was meant to connect remote guests to the show and display various graphics, but it was a failure in both ways. The internet uplink did not work, and the monitor had a "flicker" which seemingly couldn't be corrected (lol).
The above stuff was all CRTV's fault, as they bore responsibility for everything here.
However, as I alluded to in my original analysis, Steyn was also no picnic. Apparently he was a jerk to everyone, communicated poorly, pissed off most of his staff, and just sucked all around at managing. He also was falling behind in producing the 4-days-per-week content.
Despite all of this, Katz still had respect for Steyn, and wanted everything to work. For reasons unknown, he never spoke with Steyn directly about any of these problems listed above (both on Steyn's end and CRTV's end), and instead relied upon middlemen to do all the talking back and forth. This led to some of the confusion as to what Steyn and Katz believed Steyn's actual role was.
The show took place for a month or so, but it sucked, and it was not at all what was planned. This was mostly due to the limitations of the Burlington studio, but also somewhat due to Steyn not really being right for the position of executive producer.
They finally had to fire him and give up on the show.
It appears that, as I mentioned, Steyn was probably willing to just chalk the whole thing up to a failed venture, and probably would have just walked away after the firing, despite being contractually owed another $1.8 million.
However, for whatever reason, Katz took the entire thing personally, somehow cast all the blame in his mind upon Steyn, felt betrayed, and filed that $10 million spite suit.
Steyn prevailed because of the Burlington studio situation. The contract stated that Steyn would be on the hook for the 200 shows per year
once the studio was fully functional. It was clear that the studio was never fully functional, or anywhere close, even if it was technically usable to produce a simple, lower quality version of the show.
Therefore, Steyn beat the lawsuit, and then was awarded the damages stated above.
A final note, regarding Steven Crowder. Reading the entire report from the arbitrator really shed some light upon Crowder's situation, which always perplexed me.
Prior to 2017, Crowder produced content about once per week from a cheap studio (I think in his home), and didn't seem to have much of a budget or staff. When people would ask him to produce a daily show, he would respond with the hashtag #NeverDaily and swore that would absolutely never occur.
Then, in late 2016, he abruptly announced he would indeed go daily, and was introducing a subscription model called "Mug Club". (Prior to this, he was strictly providing free content on YouTube, and nothing else.)
It turned out that he had joined the CRTV lineup, and a "Mug Club" subscription was actually a CRTV subscription.
From that point, the budget of the show amazingly increased. They quickly had a nice, new studio. They were producing daily content. They were able to travel around the country at will. They had a bigger staff.
In 2018, they moved studios again, occupying an entire house converted into a radio studio. Over a month of construction took place to do this, and Crowder revealed a large editing room filled with a number of computers and new employees working at them. He also revealed that both of his parents were working for him.
I always wondered how Crowder was suddenly able to transition from moderately popular YouTube content creator to a high-quality daily show with 20 employees.
Now it appears that he was wooed by someone at CRTV, likely given a generous salary and an even more generous budget, and even allowed to hire his own parents.
I don't blame Crowder for jumping at this, but boy is he going to be screwed if CRTV falls apart.
Last edited by Kilowatt; 05-08-2018 at 01:13 PM.
