Why Donut Media Is Falling Apart: An Explainer
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Published 2024-07-03
Let’s talk about it.
Jeremiah Burton and Zach Jobe recently left Donut, an automotive YouTube powerhouse, to start their own new channel called BigTime. Donut was a few years into its new era with venture-equity backing from Recurrent Ventures, and their “Why We’re Leaving Donut” video reminded everyone of the slew of “Why I’m Leaving Hoonigan” videos we’ve seen lately. Those videos came after after Ken Block’s always-edgy Hoonigan merged with aftermarket company Wheel Pros and got an influx of cash from private investment firm Clearlake Capital, and it's a growing trend among big automotive YouTube channels.
Zach and Jerry were two of Donut’s five main personalities, along with James Pumphrey, Nolan Sykes, and Justin Freeman. The move has led to a lot of talk and speculation all over the internet and among people in the car industry, because these changes impact us all.
So, what happened? Here’s everything you need to know, and the truth about how things change when investment firms get involved in media companies.
If you don’t know my background, I’m Alanis King. I currently work for Motor1, Motorsport.com, and InsideEVs, and I’ve worked full-time for Doug DeMuro’s Cars & Bids, Business Insider, and Jalopnik. I also had a Formula One podcast with Donut Media called DRS, which got canceled after two seasons. Our F1 podcast was fun, had a huge audience, and featured two women as hosts, but we got the idea that the numbers weren’t good enough (despite being about half of Donut’s main show, Past Gas, and being a much younger show).
I’ve only had four full-time jobs, but I’ve dealt with private equity a lot, and I’ve seen how it can sometimes impact media companies. In this video, we’ll talk about what’s going on at Donut, what happens when private equity gets involved in media companies, the pros of working in big media vs. on your own, the cons, and what I think the future holds for Donut Media, Hoonigan, BigTime, and other big YouTube channels.
Jerry and Jobe talked about how it was bittersweet to leave Donut, but that’s how it works in the creative industry: If new investors come in and change the way you do things, you can go from making videos about building a car to doing listicles and rankings to reach a broader (but less engaged) audience. They talk about having their ideas rejected in favor of cheaper and easier ones, because the money people believed that to be best for business — even if the creative ones knew it wasn’t.
Making videos about cars and reviewing them is a great job. But it has its own drawbacks, and hopefully this video can give you some insight on what happens when your favorite writers, YouTubers, and content creators have to answer to new money people.
Thanks for watching my YouTube channel. Enjoy the conversation, and I’ll see you in the comments!
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All Comments (21)
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Private equity destroys every business it gets involved in.
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Private Equity companies: "Look at this amazing company making a lot of money, being popular, pushing out original and engaging content, and being successful! Let's buy them and totally change what they're doing."
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Shout out for Regular Car Reviews for doing the exact same thing for for than decade. Never selling, never beeped a word, consistently wholesome.
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Extra props in this era to Hagerty for somehow not going this way
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Big-time is doing HUGE numbers so far. Congratulations to them ✌🏾
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Also happened in the UK with Car Throttle and then spawned Auto Alex, etc
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Want to flush a company down the toilet fast? Get a big corporation to take ownership that has no idea what the business is truely about.
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Only seven minutes in and I’m already getting a great education on the industry. This is really informative and entertaining.
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I'm really happy that basically the whole of youtube is talking about this, because I've had about enough of rich people sucking the life out of other people's talents by cutting out what made the product great in the first place and then expecting the base to just blindly keep following The Brand based entirely on habit instead of substance.
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While there were channels before, I think Alex leaving Car Throttle and being incredibly successful with his own stuff was a catalyst for all these.
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Private equity has been a plague on online media and not just in the automotive space. Multiple video game, music, film, and tech media sites have been gutted because the investors only care about "Line-only-go-up" profit strategies. It's the same story at every outlet that you've described here and all it's doing is ruining the online content space as a place to develop a business/community. The suits at these investment firms don't understand being a creative and only seem to care about getting a quick buck without understanding why the money is coming in in the first place.
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DRS was such an incredible podcast, I miss it a ton. For me it was just so perfect in every way. Thanks for putting it all into a perspective, very well explained. Looking forward to all the future content! (PS. Im the girl dad from last episode’s mail segment! Thank you all for the positive message)
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I was a Jalopnik regular and attended some irl gatherings from around 2007 to 2015 and the downfall was sad. Almost every car website fell the same way, unfortunately. I'm so glad you're still online sharing cars with us!
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This same thing happened with Car Throttle in the UK. 3 channels split off from one. And now all 3 and way more successful than the original channel that's still running.
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Alanis-NEVER turn your back on a Viper...it's trying to kill you!
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"Donut got sold" "Hoonigan got sold" Who did the selling? The repercussions were obvious.
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This is why MightyCarMods will forever be the best.
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Petrolicious is another channel that got ruined by big media. I loved their stuff…
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I love the Dodge Viper in the back <3
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RIP Ken Block. He was an icon of our generation.
