WEBVTT - Techstuff Throws Rotten Tomatoes 0:00:04.160 --> 0:00:07.760 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from houstuffworks 0:00:07.800 --> 0:00:14.280 dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm 0:00:14.320 --> 0:00:17.880 your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with house 0:00:17.880 --> 0:00:21.560 Stuff Works, and iHeartRadio and I love all things tech. 0:00:22.480 --> 0:00:26.720 And today we're gonna get a little rotten. I would 0:00:26.800 --> 0:00:29.960 like to talk to you about a website that means 0:00:30.000 --> 0:00:33.680 a lot to me, Rotten Tomatoes. Now as I sit 0:00:33.840 --> 0:00:38.239 down to record this episode, that site is in the 0:00:38.280 --> 0:00:42.080 news and for those who aren't familiar with the website, 0:00:42.159 --> 0:00:46.600 Rotten Tomatoes is a site dedicated to film and television. 0:00:47.240 --> 0:00:51.520 It hosts entertainment news and previews, but it's best known 0:00:51.680 --> 0:00:56.640 as an aggregator for movie reviews. Lots of folks, including myself, 0:00:57.000 --> 0:00:59.440 use the site to get a quick feel for the 0:00:59.520 --> 0:01:04.400 quality of a film. Movies have the fresh designation, those 0:01:04.440 --> 0:01:07.640 would be interesting and entertaining films, things that you would 0:01:07.640 --> 0:01:09.760 probably want to see. Then you have movies that have 0:01:09.880 --> 0:01:14.840 the rotten designation. They might still be entertaining, but not 0:01:14.920 --> 0:01:18.240 necessarily in the way the creators had intended it to 0:01:18.280 --> 0:01:22.959 be anyway. In February twenty nineteen, Rotten Tomatoes made some 0:01:23.160 --> 0:01:27.520 headlines because some people were abusing the site's features in 0:01:27.600 --> 0:01:30.919 order to give an early negative review to the film 0:01:31.160 --> 0:01:34.679 Captain Marvel weeks before it was meant to come out. 0:01:35.240 --> 0:01:38.880 When groups of people coordinate this effort, it's called a 0:01:38.959 --> 0:01:42.520 review bomb, and it's usually meant to send a message 0:01:42.640 --> 0:01:46.319 or negatively affect a particular film or TV show or 0:01:46.400 --> 0:01:51.040 video games commercial performance, regardless of the actual quality of 0:01:51.080 --> 0:01:55.920 the media itself. In response, Rotten Tomatoes has adjusted how 0:01:55.960 --> 0:01:59.120 they do things. More on that a bit later, but 0:01:59.200 --> 0:02:01.600 I thought it was time to dive into the history 0:02:01.760 --> 0:02:04.880 of the site. Where did it come from and what 0:02:04.920 --> 0:02:09.600 do those ratings actually mean? The Rotten Tomato story starts 0:02:09.720 --> 0:02:13.600 way back in nineteen ninety eight. Yep, the site is 0:02:13.720 --> 0:02:17.520 more than twenty years old, and it was the brainchild 0:02:17.680 --> 0:02:21.679 of a guy named Sen Duang, a creative design director, 0:02:22.160 --> 0:02:25.160 and he worked for a web design company called Design 0:02:25.240 --> 0:02:29.919 Reactor in San Francisco, California. Besides being a web designer, 0:02:30.240 --> 0:02:34.600 Dwang was a big action film fan. He loved watching 0:02:34.680 --> 0:02:39.520 movies starring icons of the genre like Arnold Schwarzenegger or 0:02:39.560 --> 0:02:43.560 Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis, but he was also a 0:02:43.600 --> 0:02:47.240 really big fan of Asian stars like Jet Lee and 0:02:47.320 --> 0:02:50.440 Jackie Chan, who at that time had not yet managed 0:02:50.440 --> 0:02:55.320 to get much mainstream attention in the States. Then in 0:02:55.440 --> 0:02:59.600 nineteen ninety six, Jackie Chan's film Rumble in the Bronx 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:03.160 got a US release. That's a phenomenal film, by the way, 0:03:03.160 --> 0:03:06.000 if you have not seen it, highly recommended. I certify 0:03:06.040 --> 0:03:10.320 that one. Fresh awareness of Jackie Chan was on the rise, 0:03:10.400 --> 0:03:14.640 and Duang was curious about how American audiences at large 0:03:15.040 --> 0:03:18.520 would feel about the film, so he found himself checking 0:03:18.639 --> 0:03:23.000 reviews and box office results for the movie. He also 0:03:23.280 --> 0:03:26.880 became a big fan of Ciskel and Ebert and their 0:03:26.880 --> 0:03:31.000 movie review show at the Movies Now for those youngsters 0:03:31.080 --> 0:03:36.080 out there, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert were two famous 0:03:36.240 --> 0:03:40.080 film critics who worked at different newspapers in Chicago, and 0:03:40.160 --> 0:03:43.160 they hosted a few different television shows over the years 0:03:43.480 --> 0:03:46.640 in which they would discuss and review films, and they 0:03:46.680 --> 0:03:49.920 were famous for giving a movie either a thumb's up 0:03:50.000 --> 0:03:54.680 recommendation or a thumbs down. Skipet Dewong decided he wanted 0:03:54.720 --> 0:03:59.120 to create a website dedicated to film reviews, and he 0:03:59.160 --> 0:04:02.880 originally thought about naming it Thumbs Up, but before long 0:04:02.920 --> 0:04:06.240 he changed his mind. Which was likely a good idea 0:04:06.480 --> 0:04:11.000 due to intellectual property reasons. He instead decided to see 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:15.880 if rotten tomatoes was available, and it was, so he 0:04:15.920 --> 0:04:20.960 went with that. Now. According to an oral history of 0:04:21.040 --> 0:04:24.520 rotten Tomatoes, which is hosted on the rotten Tomatoes blog 0:04:24.680 --> 0:04:29.200 at the rotten Tomatoes site, a film inspired Dwang to 0:04:29.760 --> 0:04:34.480 use that name. And I quote, the name rotten tomatoes 0:04:34.640 --> 0:04:38.919 came to send while watching the fantasy film Leolo, about 0:04:38.960 --> 0:04:42.680 a boy who imagines himself to be the offspring of 0:04:42.720 --> 0:04:47.159 an Italian peasant and a giant tomato end quote. And 0:04:47.560 --> 0:04:51.480 maybe that's right. I mean, I'm sure the story came 0:04:51.520 --> 0:04:55.080 from Dwang himself, but it seems to me far more 0:04:55.279 --> 0:04:58.600 likely that the name rotten tomatoes is really just a 0:04:58.640 --> 0:05:03.040 reference to the old trope of an agitated audience hurling 0:05:03.240 --> 0:05:08.200 rotten vegetables a performers up on stage. Why anyone would 0:05:08.200 --> 0:05:11.839 bring rotten tomatoes in the first place is beyond me. 0:05:12.400 --> 0:05:15.159 Perhaps they were just hoping for a bad performance, or 0:05:15.760 --> 0:05:18.360 maybe it was just a way to deal with food waste, 0:05:18.839 --> 0:05:20.840 or maybe it was just a trope that never had 0:05:20.880 --> 0:05:25.240 any real basis in reality. Anyway, to me, it just 0:05:25.240 --> 0:05:28.480 seems far more likely that the name was inspired by 0:05:28.560 --> 0:05:31.920 that idea instead of a fantasy film. And in fact, 0:05:31.960 --> 0:05:34.960 if you visit the Rotten Tomatoes site today and you 0:05:35.000 --> 0:05:39.799 look at how they aggregate their scores, you would see 0:05:39.839 --> 0:05:45.560 that they also reference this particular idea. Anyway, whatever the 0:05:45.600 --> 0:05:49.479 inspiration really was for the name, Dwang launched the site 0:05:49.520 --> 0:05:54.480 on August eighteenth, nineteen ninety eight. Now, the earliest snapshot 0:05:54.680 --> 0:05:58.360 I could find on the Internet archive was for November 0:05:58.400 --> 0:06:02.479 twenty eighth, nineteen nine. The layout at that time was 0:06:02.520 --> 0:06:06.040 pretty simple. Down the middle of the page were news 0:06:06.080 --> 0:06:10.680 items about upcoming and newly released films. Down the left side, 0:06:10.920 --> 0:06:13.280 or along the left rail, as you might say in 0:06:13.360 --> 0:06:17.039 web design, you would find films that were recently released, 0:06:17.040 --> 0:06:20.320 either in theaters or on home video. They were grouped together, 0:06:21.000 --> 0:06:24.719 and you would get the ones that were from that week, 0:06:25.080 --> 0:06:28.040 the previous week, and then two weeks and then three 0:06:28.120 --> 0:06:31.719 weeks before. A small red dot would designate a title 0:06:31.720 --> 0:06:36.080 as having the fresh rating the overall positive review score. 0:06:36.880 --> 0:06:40.719 The right rail had upcoming films listed both for cinemas 0:06:40.839 --> 0:06:45.039 and for home theater, and would also include trailers for 0:06:45.279 --> 0:06:49.560 upcoming films. On the bottom right rail was a breakdown 0:06:49.640 --> 0:06:52.280 of the top ten films by box office in the 0:06:52.400 --> 0:06:55.560 United States. And I know what you're all thinking. You're thinking, Jonathan, 0:06:56.279 --> 0:06:59.960 you looked at the Rotten Tomatoes website for November twenty eight, 0:07:00.160 --> 0:07:04.680 nineteen ninety nine. What was the top performing film that week? Well, 0:07:04.680 --> 0:07:08.080 that would be The World Is Not Enough at James 0:07:08.080 --> 0:07:11.840 Bond film. The number ten film that week was being 0:07:11.960 --> 0:07:16.240 John Malkovich. And I would argue the film number ten 0:07:16.440 --> 0:07:19.800 was superior to film number one, but that's just my 0:07:19.960 --> 0:07:23.200 own opinion. Now. From the beginning, the Tomato meter was 0:07:23.240 --> 0:07:27.240 an important tool. This is the rating that tells visitors 0:07:27.320 --> 0:07:30.600 if a movie has been deemed good or bad, or 0:07:30.800 --> 0:07:35.520 fresh versus rotten, though the percentage wasn't regularly shown against 0:07:35.600 --> 0:07:39.920 movie titles until a little bit later. So how does 0:07:39.960 --> 0:07:44.320 this formula actually work? Is a film that scores ninety 0:07:44.400 --> 0:07:48.160 percent twice as good as a film that scores forty 0:07:48.160 --> 0:07:51.920 five percent? Are the films that have the dubious distinction 0:07:52.160 --> 0:07:57.560 of a zero percent score truly the worst movies ever made? Well, 0:07:57.600 --> 0:08:01.480 According to the founders, the formula for the Tomato Meter 0:08:01.920 --> 0:08:06.800 has remained pretty much constant since the site started. It's 0:08:06.880 --> 0:08:10.360 based on the percentage of positive reviews any given film, 0:08:10.520 --> 0:08:14.640 or these days a television show will receive. So if 0:08:14.640 --> 0:08:17.840 you have one hundred critics and half of those critics 0:08:17.880 --> 0:08:20.400 give a film a positive review and the other half 0:08:20.680 --> 0:08:25.560 trash the movie, the Tomato Meter score should be fifty percent. 0:08:26.360 --> 0:08:29.040 But it gets a bit more nuanced when you take 0:08:29.080 --> 0:08:33.080 a closer look, which we will do after this short break. 0:08:40.920 --> 0:08:47.200 So how does the Tomato meter really work? Well, the 0:08:47.400 --> 0:08:51.880 type of positive review doesn't really matter when factoring the 0:08:51.920 --> 0:08:56.120 Tomato Meters score. If as a critic you use some 0:08:56.200 --> 0:08:59.440 sort of five star system and you give a film 0:08:59.520 --> 0:09:03.960 three stars, you're essentially saying the movie is unremarkable. It's 0:09:04.120 --> 0:09:08.600 not terrible, but it's not great either. It's more good 0:09:08.720 --> 0:09:13.920 than bad, but maybe not overwhelmingly so. However, in the end, 0:09:14.280 --> 0:09:17.600 that counts as a positive review in the Tomato Meter 0:09:17.720 --> 0:09:20.880 standing it's either fresh or rotten. There are no degrees 0:09:21.120 --> 0:09:24.840 of freshness within a single review. It's only collectively that 0:09:24.880 --> 0:09:27.720 you look at them. So if you see a movie 0:09:28.080 --> 0:09:29.840 and you give it a ten, and I see a 0:09:29.880 --> 0:09:33.520 movie and I give it a seven, both of those 0:09:33.559 --> 0:09:37.319 are considered positives. It doesn't matter that one is greater 0:09:37.400 --> 0:09:41.559 than the other. So using this formula, it's actually possible 0:09:41.880 --> 0:09:46.800 for an average film that isn't particularly interesting or entertaining 0:09:47.080 --> 0:09:50.599 to receive a one hundred percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. 0:09:51.240 --> 0:09:55.320 This doesn't mean that the film is a paragon of cinema. Instead, 0:09:55.679 --> 0:09:59.120 it means none of the critics that Rotten Tomatoes relies 0:09:59.200 --> 0:10:02.760 upon the film a bad review. They might have all 0:10:02.800 --> 0:10:07.720 just said, eh, it's okay. But if they all said that, 0:10:08.120 --> 0:10:11.880 if every single critic said eh, it's okay, that still 0:10:11.920 --> 0:10:16.760 counts as a one hundred percent fresh score. Likewise, if 0:10:16.760 --> 0:10:20.720 more critics said this movie tried hard but ultimately failed, 0:10:21.040 --> 0:10:24.080 it might end up with a zero percent score. That 0:10:24.120 --> 0:10:26.120 doesn't mean it could go toe to toe with a 0:10:26.160 --> 0:10:29.280 movie like Plan nine from Outer Space or some other 0:10:29.440 --> 0:10:34.199 famously awful film to take the title of worst movie. Ever. 0:10:34.960 --> 0:10:39.240 The percentage only tells you about the critical consensus surrounding 0:10:39.280 --> 0:10:42.840 the film, not whether or not the response was overwhelmingly 0:10:42.960 --> 0:10:49.000 positive or mediocre or overwhelmingly negative. You just don't know 0:10:49.120 --> 0:10:52.600 without reading the actual reviews. You could have a case 0:10:52.920 --> 0:10:55.560 where there are two films that are both more or 0:10:55.640 --> 0:10:59.200 less the same quality, however you would define that term. 0:10:59.760 --> 0:11:03.440 But one of those two movies had more critics say Eh, 0:11:03.520 --> 0:11:05.880 it was all right, and the other one had more 0:11:05.960 --> 0:11:09.480 critics say this isn't worth your time. And the Tomato 0:11:09.520 --> 0:11:12.400 meter score might have you think that movie A, which 0:11:12.559 --> 0:11:16.040 gets say, a seventy percent score, is somehow twice as 0:11:16.120 --> 0:11:20.400 good as movie B, which has a thirty five percent score. 0:11:21.240 --> 0:11:24.560 But if you sat and watched both movies, you might 0:11:24.600 --> 0:11:29.160 walk away saying they were both pretty unremarkable. They weren't terrible, 0:11:29.200 --> 0:11:33.240 but they weren't great either. That's the limitation of the 0:11:33.280 --> 0:11:37.280 Tomato meter formula. It's meant to give you a quick 0:11:37.480 --> 0:11:41.640 critical snapshot of a movie, not a detailed diagnosis of 0:11:41.679 --> 0:11:46.600 the film's actual quality. So a thirty percent film is 0:11:46.640 --> 0:11:51.080 not necessarily worse than a forty five percent. You have 0:11:51.160 --> 0:11:54.400 to look at the details. I should add that Rotten 0:11:54.440 --> 0:11:58.720 Tomatoes doesn't use every single movie review site or blog 0:11:58.920 --> 0:12:03.200 as a resource. The site has criteria to select critics 0:12:03.240 --> 0:12:06.640 and their reviews to factor into the Tomato Meter ratings. 0:12:06.960 --> 0:12:11.640 The site also designates certain reviewers as top critics, people 0:12:11.640 --> 0:12:14.640 who have a built up history of film reviews and 0:12:14.640 --> 0:12:19.240 have received wide publication. There are also options for reviewers 0:12:19.240 --> 0:12:23.080 to upload their work directly into the Tomato Meter, they 0:12:23.120 --> 0:12:27.000 can give their films a score, perhaps a score out 0:12:27.000 --> 0:12:30.800 of ten, or even a letter grade like in school, 0:12:30.840 --> 0:12:33.840 like an AB or C or so on. To get 0:12:33.880 --> 0:12:38.160 a Tomatometer rating, a film or television show must receive 0:12:38.320 --> 0:12:42.959 at least five reviews. If at least sixty percent of 0:12:43.040 --> 0:12:47.679 the reviews are positive, the reviewed content is considered fresh. 0:12:48.200 --> 0:12:51.640 If the Tomato Meter is at fifty nine percent or lower, 0:12:52.320 --> 0:12:57.440 then the respective media is rotten. In addition, if a 0:12:57.480 --> 0:13:01.880 film has at least five reviews from top critics and 0:13:01.920 --> 0:13:04.600 at least forty reviews if it's a film that's in 0:13:04.679 --> 0:13:07.680 limited release, or eighty reviews. If it's a film in 0:13:07.760 --> 0:13:11.240 wide release, and it has a Tomato Meter score of 0:13:11.320 --> 0:13:15.760 seventy five percent or higher, it is certified fresh, or 0:13:15.920 --> 0:13:19.960 at least it qualifies for that designation. In actuality, a 0:13:20.080 --> 0:13:23.520 team of Rotten Tomatoes staffers have to look at those 0:13:23.559 --> 0:13:27.559 reviews and determine the likelihood that the movie or television 0:13:27.559 --> 0:13:30.680 show is going to remain at or above seventy five 0:13:30.720 --> 0:13:34.000 percent approval, And if they come to that conclusion that 0:13:34.040 --> 0:13:36.880 the title is pretty safe, that it's got a solid standing, 0:13:37.400 --> 0:13:41.040 it gets the certified fresh rating. Rotten Tomatoes added the 0:13:41.080 --> 0:13:44.319 certified Fresh designation around two thousand and three, So I'm 0:13:44.320 --> 0:13:47.720 getting a little ahead of myself here, but I figured 0:13:47.840 --> 0:13:50.680 it just made more sense to group all the formula 0:13:50.800 --> 0:13:55.000 stuff together. In addition to the critics scores, Rotten Tomatoes 0:13:55.040 --> 0:13:59.520 also calculates an audience score based off user submitted ratings. 0:14:00.120 --> 0:14:02.360 More on that a bit later, as it's related to 0:14:02.400 --> 0:14:06.120 the problem that Rotten Tomatoes recently had to address now. 0:14:06.160 --> 0:14:09.920 According to Dwong, he promoted his brand new site by 0:14:09.960 --> 0:14:13.040 going on to Usenet groups and sharing the link there, 0:14:13.440 --> 0:14:17.920 and he managed to attract one hundred whole visitors that 0:14:18.000 --> 0:14:22.360 first day. Not long after the first day, Yahoo promoted 0:14:22.360 --> 0:14:25.600 the site as site of the Day, and as someone 0:14:25.600 --> 0:14:28.680 who has had work promoted on Yahoo back in the day, 0:14:29.200 --> 0:14:32.560 this was a big deal. It boosted his visitor account considerably. 0:14:33.320 --> 0:14:37.120 Then the site was covered by USA Today and Netscape 0:14:37.160 --> 0:14:40.240 featured it on a landing page, and that really pushed 0:14:40.280 --> 0:14:44.160 the numbers. Roger Ebert himself mentioned the site, and then 0:14:44.200 --> 0:14:47.440 it really was off to the races. Duang at the 0:14:47.480 --> 0:14:50.560 time was still working at Design Reactor, but he was 0:14:50.600 --> 0:14:53.480 finding it exhausting to do his job during the day 0:14:53.880 --> 0:14:57.360 and then work on Rotten Tomatoes every night, so he 0:14:57.520 --> 0:15:02.200 made a really big Leapes cided to quit his steady 0:15:02.240 --> 0:15:06.440 gig and concentrate full time on running the site. He 0:15:06.520 --> 0:15:09.520 also hired on two of his friends in nineteen ninety 0:15:09.600 --> 0:15:12.560 nine to help him. One became the editor in chief 0:15:12.560 --> 0:15:16.200 for the site and another became the marketing director at 0:15:16.320 --> 0:15:20.640 least initially, and their headquarters was Dwang's apartment. Now at 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:25.840 this point, he had moved from San Francisco back to Sacramento, California, 0:15:25.920 --> 0:15:30.760 where rent was a little cheaper. Meanwhile, back at Design Reactor, 0:15:31.160 --> 0:15:35.000 Stephen Wong and Patrick Lee were interested in their former 0:15:35.080 --> 0:15:38.360 colleague's work, so they reached out to Duong and suggested 0:15:38.360 --> 0:15:42.200 that they actually join forces again and merge Rotten Tomatoes 0:15:42.560 --> 0:15:46.520 into Design Reactor directly and take up a new headquarters 0:15:46.560 --> 0:15:51.760 in Emeryville, California. And Dwang agreed, so they collectively hired 0:15:51.800 --> 0:15:54.560 on an outside company to do some design work for 0:15:54.600 --> 0:15:56.440 the site so that they weren't doing all of that 0:15:56.520 --> 0:15:59.760 work themselves. Stephen Wong started to head up efforts to 0:15:59.800 --> 0:16:03.440 in corporate dynamic elements in the site design so that 0:16:03.800 --> 0:16:06.800 it wasn't just a static web page every time someone 0:16:06.920 --> 0:16:10.360 visited it. For those of you who don't remember the web. 0:16:10.400 --> 0:16:13.040 In the old web one point zero days, that was 0:16:13.080 --> 0:16:15.400 pretty common. You would go to a website and it 0:16:15.440 --> 0:16:19.040 was like a magazine page. There was no expectation that 0:16:19.080 --> 0:16:22.200 the content was going to change day to day. This 0:16:22.360 --> 0:16:24.640 was an effort to move more to a web two 0:16:24.640 --> 0:16:27.960 point oh philosophy, where you have these dynamic elements that 0:16:28.000 --> 0:16:31.280 can change over time and give reason for people to 0:16:31.320 --> 0:16:34.600 come back to a site again and again. The new 0:16:34.640 --> 0:16:37.680 design also supported something that the old site had lacked, 0:16:38.440 --> 0:16:43.040 ad space. Until that happened, there was really no revenue 0:16:43.080 --> 0:16:47.000 model for the website. There's no way to make money now. 0:16:47.040 --> 0:16:49.240 One thing the team had to deal with was the 0:16:49.320 --> 0:16:53.680 reaction from fans once the site began to feature advertising 0:16:53.720 --> 0:16:57.840 on it. Lots of people didn't like the site redesign, 0:16:58.160 --> 0:17:01.320 and they really hated that ads were starting to appear 0:17:01.360 --> 0:17:05.479 on the web pages. I've experienced this myself, and it 0:17:05.640 --> 0:17:08.960 is a bit tricky. After all, unless there is a 0:17:09.000 --> 0:17:12.320 way to make money from my work, I can't really 0:17:12.359 --> 0:17:15.199 devote time to that work because I still have to 0:17:15.200 --> 0:17:20.240 pay bills and stuff, and the alternatives to advertising tend 0:17:20.240 --> 0:17:22.879 to be ones that people don't like very much. Like 0:17:23.200 --> 0:17:26.879 putting your stuff up behind a paywall. These days, a 0:17:26.960 --> 0:17:30.320 related model in which fans directly support the creators of 0:17:30.359 --> 0:17:34.080 the stuff they love has emerged, and some people can 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:37.040 make a living off of that through platforms like Patreon. 0:17:37.640 --> 0:17:41.760 But that model doesn't work for everyone, particularly a full 0:17:41.800 --> 0:17:45.399 blown company that needs to have a more predictable revenue stream. 0:17:46.320 --> 0:17:49.840 Patrick Lee structured the company and he began to seek 0:17:49.920 --> 0:17:53.960 out investment capital. He also took it upon himself to 0:17:54.040 --> 0:17:57.679 respond to people who were mad about the advertising that 0:17:57.720 --> 0:18:00.320 was appearing on the site. He said he found most 0:18:00.359 --> 0:18:04.159 people were much more reasonable once a human being reached 0:18:04.160 --> 0:18:07.600 out to them to acknowledge their concerns and complaints, and 0:18:07.640 --> 0:18:10.040 that it helped smooth things over. He said, people who 0:18:10.080 --> 0:18:13.880 had been flaming you earlier on with terrible language would 0:18:13.920 --> 0:18:18.560 apologize to you and then have a logical and calm conversation. 0:18:19.000 --> 0:18:20.800 They just need to know that a human being was 0:18:20.800 --> 0:18:23.960 actually there to listen. Now, this was back in the 0:18:24.160 --> 0:18:28.720 pre dot com crash days, and at that time lots 0:18:28.760 --> 0:18:31.879 of investors were eager to get in on the action. 0:18:32.520 --> 0:18:37.560 Rotten Tomatoes didn't have much trouble securing investments. Patrick Lee's 0:18:37.560 --> 0:18:42.600 initial efforts raised a million dollars in funding. At this point, 0:18:42.760 --> 0:18:47.080 the Rotten Tomatoes staff numbered about twenty people. A couple 0:18:47.160 --> 0:18:50.119 of months later, it was up to twenty five people, 0:18:50.560 --> 0:18:54.160 and the site was doing well. By January two thousand, 0:18:54.680 --> 0:18:58.640 it was receiving a quarter of a million unique visitors 0:18:58.680 --> 0:19:02.520 per day. But he hired Lily Chi to serve as 0:19:02.560 --> 0:19:07.920 the chief financial officer, and then the bottom fell out. 0:19:08.760 --> 0:19:12.720 By the bottom falling out, I don't mean that the 0:19:12.880 --> 0:19:16.840 CFO caused any problems. What I mean is the dot 0:19:16.880 --> 0:19:21.320 com crash happened. Now. I've done episodes of tech stuff 0:19:21.480 --> 0:19:25.359 about this era and about the dot com crash, and 0:19:25.400 --> 0:19:29.159 I go into it in great detail, but obviously I 0:19:29.160 --> 0:19:31.920 don't want to do that here. I'll give a quick 0:19:31.960 --> 0:19:36.240 overview in just a moment. So what was the dot 0:19:36.280 --> 0:19:42.679 com crash? Cliffs notes. This was when the dot com industry, 0:19:43.000 --> 0:19:47.760 the Internet market suffered a massive market crash, and there 0:19:47.760 --> 0:19:51.720 were a lot of reasons for that market crash. It's 0:19:51.760 --> 0:19:56.399 a complicated subject. One of those reasons was that you 0:19:56.480 --> 0:20:00.159 had a lot of investors pouring millions of dollars, in 0:20:00.200 --> 0:20:05.480 some cases hundreds of millions of dollars into various startup 0:20:05.600 --> 0:20:10.520 Internet companies in a sort of virtual gold rush. Everyone 0:20:10.640 --> 0:20:14.320 was trying to stake a claim on the incredible potential 0:20:14.520 --> 0:20:17.800 of the Internet. No one was really sure how it 0:20:17.880 --> 0:20:21.160 was going to pay off, but everyone was convinced it 0:20:21.240 --> 0:20:25.359 would pay off. However, many of those companies had no 0:20:25.560 --> 0:20:29.720 means of generating revenue. Some of them had no business 0:20:29.760 --> 0:20:34.399 plan at all, just an idea. Others had a business plan, 0:20:34.560 --> 0:20:37.840 but they grew so fast, and they poured so much 0:20:37.880 --> 0:20:41.480 money into stuff like cool office space, that they spread 0:20:41.480 --> 0:20:45.760 themselves way too thin, way too quickly, and they encountered trouble. 0:20:46.280 --> 0:20:49.560 Investors began to lose confidence. People began to pull their 0:20:49.560 --> 0:20:53.320 money out of the market, and companies were disappearing left 0:20:53.400 --> 0:20:57.000 and right. And it wasn't just the investment money that 0:20:57.080 --> 0:21:02.439 was slowing down. Ad revenue became scarce as well. Advertisers 0:21:02.520 --> 0:21:06.160 pulled back from the Internet. Now they weren't sure if 0:21:06.200 --> 0:21:09.240 the money they were spending would be a sound investment. 0:21:09.800 --> 0:21:12.680 If a website were to go out of business, then 0:21:12.720 --> 0:21:14.719 no one would see your advertising. That would just be 0:21:14.920 --> 0:21:20.200 money thrown away. Rotten Tomatoes was affected like many other companies. 0:21:20.720 --> 0:21:24.160 The twenty five staff members got reduced down to eight 0:21:24.560 --> 0:21:28.919 and then down again to seven, and even those seven 0:21:28.960 --> 0:21:32.639 people saw their salaries go down by a third and 0:21:32.680 --> 0:21:35.600 then later on another cut, so that they were essentially 0:21:35.640 --> 0:21:40.000 making half of what they started with. Patrick Lee would 0:21:40.000 --> 0:21:43.320 reduce his own salary to nothing at all, as did 0:21:43.359 --> 0:21:46.000 Paul Lee, who at that point was the director of marketing, 0:21:46.680 --> 0:21:50.000 and Patrick Lee tried to keep the business afloat. His 0:21:50.119 --> 0:21:53.120 goal was to ride out the storm and to return 0:21:53.240 --> 0:21:57.840 to profitability in order to provide investors a return on 0:21:57.960 --> 0:22:01.399 their investment. He was determined not to fail the people 0:22:01.560 --> 0:22:05.040 who had provided the company with funding, and according to Lee, 0:22:05.640 --> 0:22:08.919 he even at one point decided to move into the 0:22:09.000 --> 0:22:16.000 Rotten Tomatoes office because his biggest expense every month was rent, 0:22:16.160 --> 0:22:19.960 so why not cut out the rent and just move 0:22:20.000 --> 0:22:24.879 into the company offices. He used a club that was 0:22:25.280 --> 0:22:28.199 in the same building and used their shower facilities, and 0:22:28.320 --> 0:22:30.639 he was known as being something of a neat freak, 0:22:31.160 --> 0:22:33.960 so he figured it wouldn't be that big a deal, 0:22:34.359 --> 0:22:38.240 just another interesting footnote in the Rotten Tomatoes history. Well, 0:22:38.240 --> 0:22:42.240 the company was actually able to survive because largely of 0:22:42.280 --> 0:22:46.679 its investors. The funding round that raised one million dollars 0:22:46.720 --> 0:22:50.040 had closed just a couple of months before the market crash, 0:22:50.160 --> 0:22:53.000 so the timing was about as good as it possibly 0:22:53.119 --> 0:22:57.000 could be. With the crash right around the corner. The 0:22:57.119 --> 0:23:00.920 company was flush with cash. Rotten Tomatoes had a little 0:23:00.960 --> 0:23:03.479 bit of a safety net in the form of that money, 0:23:03.680 --> 0:23:07.439 and the investors didn't compounding at the company's doors or 0:23:07.440 --> 0:23:11.040 demand changes in how the company was operating, and just 0:23:11.280 --> 0:23:14.840 let them go about their business, which really helped them 0:23:14.960 --> 0:23:19.000 as well. The team was convinced that online was going 0:23:19.040 --> 0:23:21.600 to be the future for movie reviews, that more and 0:23:21.680 --> 0:23:24.560 more people were going to use the internet to look 0:23:24.600 --> 0:23:27.920 up review scores, they were going to transition from relying 0:23:27.960 --> 0:23:31.520 on things like the newspaper, and besides, Run Tomatoes would 0:23:31.760 --> 0:23:35.879 include links out to full reviews, giving moviegoers the option 0:23:36.000 --> 0:23:40.040 to read numerous critical analyzes of different films in the theaters, 0:23:40.400 --> 0:23:44.399 all from a centralized location. Everyone was sure the market 0:23:44.400 --> 0:23:47.240 would eventually come around. The company just had to be 0:23:47.320 --> 0:23:51.639 able to survive until that actually happened. The small team 0:23:52.040 --> 0:23:56.280 tried to keep things light as the office was dealing 0:23:56.320 --> 0:24:00.920 with the stress of operating under these difficult circumstances. They 0:24:01.000 --> 0:24:05.200 would play video games. They held different parties. Their Halloween 0:24:05.280 --> 0:24:11.680 party was apparently something of a famous annual event, and 0:24:11.720 --> 0:24:14.280 there were a lot of stories about how most of 0:24:14.320 --> 0:24:18.399 the team was pretty awful at showing up in the morning. 0:24:19.000 --> 0:24:23.119 Most people would filter in at eleven am or even noon. 0:24:23.960 --> 0:24:27.200 They even tried to create a financial incentive for people 0:24:27.280 --> 0:24:30.480 to show up on time to take regular business hours. 0:24:30.760 --> 0:24:34.879 They instituted the Pig, a piggy bank that people would 0:24:34.880 --> 0:24:37.960 have to contribute to whenever they showed up after ten am. 0:24:38.359 --> 0:24:40.560 At the end of each month, the money in the 0:24:40.600 --> 0:24:44.240 pig would pay for a company meal, and apparently they 0:24:44.240 --> 0:24:47.520 had some pretty nice meals because people still didn't find 0:24:47.520 --> 0:24:50.360 a way to come in during normal office hours, though 0:24:50.359 --> 0:24:52.640 they would stay long enough to get all their work done. 0:24:52.720 --> 0:24:55.639 It wasn't that they were shirking their duties, they just 0:24:55.720 --> 0:24:59.439 weren't in the office at normal hours. The two thousand 0:24:59.560 --> 0:25:03.320 crash had a long lasting effect. Even in two thousand 0:25:03.320 --> 0:25:06.400 and three, which is when Patrick Lee temporarily moved into 0:25:06.400 --> 0:25:10.000 the office, the company was still in a precarious position. 0:25:10.400 --> 0:25:14.600 Revenues had not been growing super fast, and the coffers 0:25:14.640 --> 0:25:17.439 were reduced a bit. The investment money was down to 0:25:18.040 --> 0:25:21.240 around half of what it had been. But these seven 0:25:21.280 --> 0:25:23.680 people on the team still believed in what they were doing, 0:25:24.040 --> 0:25:28.160 and their work was having an impact on the entertainment industry. 0:25:28.200 --> 0:25:31.399 Even though Rotten Tomatoes is an aggregator, not a company 0:25:31.400 --> 0:25:34.240 that does its own movie reviews, it was seen as 0:25:34.280 --> 0:25:37.240 a huge marketing boost if a film had a high 0:25:37.320 --> 0:25:40.919 Tomato Meter score. Films that hit one hundred percent and 0:25:40.960 --> 0:25:43.000 stayed there for a while could find some pretty good 0:25:43.000 --> 0:25:46.560 box office performance, and films that had lower scores would 0:25:46.600 --> 0:25:50.040 see fewer ticket sales. So filmmakers started to develop a 0:25:50.200 --> 0:25:53.840 sort of love hate relationship with the company, and then 0:25:53.880 --> 0:26:00.200 another company would come knocking. This company was IGN Entertainment, which, 0:26:00.280 --> 0:26:03.480 as the name suggests, was an entertainment website that was 0:26:03.480 --> 0:26:06.040 founded back in nineteen ninety six and it was mostly 0:26:06.119 --> 0:26:10.080 known for video game coverage. IGN issued a press release 0:26:10.119 --> 0:26:13.600 on June twenty ninth, two thousand and four, to announce 0:26:13.600 --> 0:26:16.920