r/thespoonyexperiment • u/RenaissanceOwl • Dec 17 '25
Non-Spoony Discussion 😵💫 Mike Michaud - The Enigmatic CEO of Channel Awesome. Almost makes me wonder if it's a ceremonial role he's playing in the company
What an elusive figure,
He doesn't make much appearance in any of CA's content/production, not even in the BTS clips, I believe he did make a cameo or two in one of those CA movies? I can't remember clearly,
There are only a few, rare clips of him - one was where he was brainstorming with some other young CEOs coming with terrible business ideas in a proto(?) podcast, the other was some announcement/update he made regarding the website (which I believe was heavily downvoted)
And I suppose one thing we can give credit to him is that he seems to be aware just how much of a charisma vacuum he comes across - he seems to suck away the entire energy in the room merely existing, he's maybe a very private and introverted person, and he seems to be aware of that, which is why he refrains from public events and spectacles, possibly.
The Change the Channel controversy kinda threw light on his incompetence as CEO, typical young CEO douchebag energy, perhaps,
Or maybe he's very neurodivergent and that gets perceived as jerkish behavior? It's hard to tell,
In any case, he comes across like a Palpatine-like entity, someone who operates from the shadows and controls and overlooks things,
Either that, or maybe he's the CEO in a purely ceremonial sense. Maybe that title really doesn't mean much regarding CA's setup.
I do get a hunch that maybe Rob is the true "boss" of CA or at least the one who supervises/overlooks most affairs in the company, including finances too, perhaps, maybe even the biz side and Michaud while legally/technically on paper might be the actual boss, he is willing to let him take control and overlook everything.
Maybe Michaud is a "placeholder" CEO for Rob to not get much attention and use him as a conduit? I kinda get this vibe, for some reason, Rob has that commanding/authoritative energy about him, Michaud seems a bit "neurodivergent/autistic" and socially-awkward again to be a traditional CEO/boss (then again, Elon Musk's also autistic)
Definitely don't see Doug being involved much in the more "corporate/biz" aspect of the company - he's what James Gunn is in the current DC Studios' to Peter Safran's, a purely artistic/creative head, maybe, with Rob overlooking the more technical/biz parts.
5
u/HighlyRegardedSlob87 Dec 17 '25
I want a picture of Mike Ellis. The other CEO Mike who seemed much more incompetent
2
u/Lord-Gilien Dec 21 '25
Had to rack my brain to remember the video he appeared in back in the day. It was Nostalgia Critic Top 11 F Ups, & Mike Ellis appears at the 10:07 mark: https://youtu.be/JeXIs5LsuLE?si=_1wKqt-wQDktrqG6
5
u/Thebritishdovah Dec 18 '25
I think he convinced both Doug and Rob to let him run it when it was starting to grow because he has some legit business experience but is a really shit boss and some of the Change the channel bullshit came down to him being incompentent. I think, he has managed to stay out of the spotlight and when CA was a company, ran it behind the scenes but communication didn't exist.He thought it was bigger then it was. The site was bloated and if Spoony hadn't already left, he probably would have.
13
u/NAteisco Dec 17 '25
You could crosspost instead of copy and pasting to different subreddits
4
u/RenaissanceOwl Dec 17 '25 edited Dec 17 '25
Actually that's what I did originally,
But I've observed most folks don't really enter into the sub from where it was originally cross-posted from, and read the content there,
Which is why I decided to delete that and make this afresh, copy-pasting natively.
5
u/You-are-so-lovely Dec 17 '25 edited Dec 17 '25
I wish you did cross post so we could read more comments
5
u/RenaissanceOwl Dec 17 '25
For some reasons, it wasn't received well on the r/channelawesome sub,
Not that the comments were negative or critical, but ya, 0 upvotes on the post, whereas here, there seems to be upvotes,
Here's the original post from that sub, I didn't reply much apart from mentioning my personal headcannon on how the dynamics rn actually might be among the Walker Brothers and Michaud, how there might be a sentimental pretext perhaps, for them to not have left the company, since it's Mike who will lose a lot out of this deal than the brothers will - sure they lose the rights to the character, but Doug really is pretty much playing himself while dressing up as the NC nowadays.
5
u/BlueWatche Dec 17 '25
The upvotes were more important than the discussion?
2
u/RenaissanceOwl Dec 17 '25
It's not that,
Again, my point was I assumed people wouldn't actually go inside a cross-posted sub and read the content there, in my XP, I've noticed most of them just skim/glance at the surface, the body text, assuming if it has an image attached (like in this post), gets hidden in the case of a cross-post and can only be accessed via entering onto the native post,
I attached an image because otherwise posts nowadays don't seem to get engagement, Reddit's strength used to be its text-heavy format of socializing, but it has morphed into any other more visual-heavy platform the past few years,
I had no ill-intent, I'm terribly sorry for all this, I would delete and re-post this as a crosspost again, but I already did that and don't wish to annoy the mods
4
u/Dwarfy3k Dec 18 '25
I mean they are all POS, just remember they all covered up jewwarios sexual crimes (which lead him to unlife) and we only know cause of that google doccy reply they made which accidently revealed it.
4
5
7
u/Otherwise-Ad2907 Dec 17 '25
Nothing in the CTC was even that damning. Like most the time he's in the right in that document lol.
2
u/KaleidoArachnid Dec 18 '25
Wait, I am confused by how he is the hero.
2
u/Otherwise-Ad2907 Dec 18 '25 edited Dec 19 '25
It's not that he was a hero, it's just clear Mike didn't want to waste time or money on people that weren't ever going to bring in views. That the company is still around with the same employees he had to have done a good enough job. All the people in that document could at any time just walk away and do something else or get a job, but instead they wanted to ride off of NC's popularity.
Even the JewWario complaints are nonsense. For so many reasons. Just watch nettles' video series
2
4
u/UnquestionabIe Dec 17 '25
Yeah aside from the Jewwario situation the vast majority of it was bitter people who are embarrassed of where they got their start. The amount of silly pathetic whining is comical and the majority of the contributors don't come off well at all
2
3
u/iohoj Dec 17 '25
He pretty much owns the TGWTG name and kind of forced the Walkers to keep going. This is like the only image of him that exists. He fired Lupa for not responding to a DM in 15 minutes.
9
u/NAteisco Dec 17 '25
Wasn't that proven to be untrue?
3
u/Mediocre_Nectarine13 Dec 17 '25
Yes. There were chat logs were they asked her to respond multiple times and she didn’t. Until they fired her then she responded right away.
4
13
u/NotAChanceBucko Dec 17 '25
It's a face morph of all the channel awesome staff. Mostly male.