The most amazing things someone can achieve in life NEVER come easy; the team here at Valley Studios can certainly attest to that. Ever since we joined voices back in 2014, our main goal has been to entertain all of you with our content. For the past five years, YouTube has been the place for us to do just that. Whether it was the antics of HPT, our recent visits to the Geekdom, or the animated antics of an animated rooster, Valley Studios has been posting content to YouTube consistently, in the hopes that the platform will allow us to grow...sadly, it looks as though that partnership is now over.
As over November 14, 2019, it was announced that in response to their $170,000,000 fine from the FTC, YouTube will now comply with COPPA, (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) by in enforcing new guidelines onto its creators. According to the new guidelines, all videos and channels on the platform must now identify whether or not their content is "Made for Kids". By doing so, this will prevent personalized ads to be played in front of or during videos, thus reducing our earnings by 90%!
That's not the main reason we're leaving; in truth, we've always been working on non-existent budgets to create our content without a dime from YouTube. However, the real slap to the face for us is that content that is "Made for Kids" will be stripped of key features that allow videos to grow on the platform, including no longer having notifications to our subscribers that we've uploaded new videos, all of our videos will now be stricken from the search engines, and essentially we'd be creating videos for no reason, with no way to show them to anyone.
It's truly a low blow to our company, especially since our landmark character, Chucky Chicken, is a family-friendly show. By complying with COPPA, it now has essentially protected kids from our content, and treated us like kids in the process. So, now with no tools to help our channel grow, it's been decided that Valley Studios will no longer be creating content for YouTube as of November 16, 2019.
As a continued supporter of high quality content on the platform, it truly disgusts me that it has come to this. I could go on about how this new law is essentially giving less responsibilities to parents, now allowing them to parent less, and forcing the creator to censor or give up what they love to create in order to succeed on the platform, and it also is a harsh reality that by creating good high-quality content for families is now being punished by the platform that is trying to push out family-friendly content in the first place. I doubt that YouTube will be able to recover in a positive way from this, and if it does recover, the platform will be riddled with bloggers, non-kid friendly content, and will become a pretty sorry excuse of a website.
So, what does this mean for us? Well we will now be uploading our content onto Vimeo, as well as uploading it directly onto our website, here at www.valleystudiosmedia.com. We'll shake off this punch in the gut by creating some amazing content and getting it out there in brand new ways. So, while we are now traveling down a brand new path, please bear with us as we learn a whole new platform, and a whole new way to get the shows you love to you.
On behalf of the entire team here at Valley Studios, thank you for your continued support, and rest assured that once we get more info and links, you'll be the very first to know. Thanks for following us on this adventure, we'll see you all real soon, and remember...keep the dream alive!!