DISCLAIMER: What follows is a mixture of fact, speculation & satire therefore “ALLEGEDLY” prefaces & applies to all posts. Updated April 11, 2019.
HAVE THE KERZNERS DELIVERED ON THEIR PROMISES?
If we're going to discuss this we first need to look at what promises they made to their donors.
Liana K's Kickstarter:
Liana's Kickstarter closed June 1, 2017, at which time all the funds raised were released to her. On the production side, she was one month late but basically met her target of premiering the series in the Fall of 2017 and running one episode a month for a year, by posting episode one to YouTube in November, 2017 with the final episode being posted October, 2018.
However, she failed to fulfill her promised "estimated delivery" of September 2017 for all physical rewards and incentives.
Promises Kept:
- 12 episodes of Lady Bits plus extra video clips (blooper reel, etc)
Promises Not Kept:
- Frank Cho prints
- a DVD of the series
- Lady Bits T-shirts
- Lady Bits patches
- your name and your pet's name on set, and we'll send you a picture of it*
*The "your name and your pet's name on set" promise, which could easily have been fulfilled by writing them on a banner or anything else, was apparently tossed overboard in lieu of the much easier for Liana and Steven option of "running everyone and their pets' names in the end credits at rocket speed". So they kind of only half lied about this one.
UPDATE: As of April, 2019 Liana is apparently finally getting her T-shirts etc in the mail. This is more than a year and a half late and suspiciously only happening AFTER I trolled the Kerzners and AFTER Da Serson Room called them out specifically on this issue three times...... Anyone out there believe this timing is coincidental? If so, boy oh boy has George C. Parker got just the deal for you!
FU Network & Ed the Sock IndieGogos:
The main Kerzner promise here was that they would launch an independent network like "what MuchMusic used to be", including bringing back such classic shows as Fromage, Electric Circus, Loud, Speakers Corner and the Tree Toss.
Shitty Steven posted this crap everywhere, linking actual celebrities who had nothing to do with his crowdfunding projects to give his campaign the air of legitimacy. Note how he also requested donations through PayPal which unlike Patreon, Kickstarter, IndieGogo and GoFundMe are untraceable to the public.
Initially the network and new shows were supposed to be coming in the fall of 2017 with an October Kickstarter. Then the IndieGogo campaign in June-July 2018 was supposed to be a 30 day countdown to the network's launch. Neither of those happened. Stuff was supposed to be coming "around the holidays" in 2018. Then in February, 2019. The Kerzners then promised new shows in March 2019. But still all we have is this............
The same shitty website they set up in 2016/2017, with show logos linking to NOTHING.
But it's still got a nice, big, functional PayPal button, because the Shitty Kerzners are STILL collecting money there as well as on Patreon.
They also promised a new FU Network show, Live in Canada It's Ed the Sock (which also received Patreon funding on its own!), but after a few pitiful live streaming YouTube broadcasts from the lobby of a restaurant in downtown Toronto they pulled the plug on that, promising new episodes that also have never come.
So they have completely failed to deliver on their promised network and shows.
What's worse, even if they were actually trying to produce the shows they promised (and they obviously have not been), the Kerzners know perfectly well that THEY CANNOT DELIVER THE SHOWS THEY PROMISED US.
Because the shows they promised us are not owned by them. They were owned by MuchMusic, and are now owned by Bell Media or their original creators. I'll get deeper into the Kerzners' Bell-baiting and underhanded games in the future, but right now what matters is that they knew exactly what they were doing (and could not do) concerning their Ed the Sock crowdfunding campaigns.
The Kerzners have produced a lot of TV. They know perfectly well how rights work and they knew they couldn't just decide to bring back these old shows. Even putting the rights issue aside, they could not possibly PRODUCE those shows...... Does anyone believe they really thought they could shoot Electric Circus in a corner of their fucking basement too?
They deliberately sold their backers something they 100% knew they could not deliver.
And that's why this:
And this:
Became THIS in March 2019, after months of questions from backers:
Except bringing those shows back is EXACTLY what you said you would do, Kerzners. You promised to create a MuchMusic-like network and you specifically promised to bring all of these shows back "and more". (You did ALSO promise to create new shows "in the spirit of Much", not that it even matters since you have not delivered on those promises either.)
So it's safe to say the Kerzners deserve a grade of FUCKING F in the production category, because a regular F just isn't low enough for such slimy Kerzner-like behaviour.
When we look at their delivery of physical rewards for backers however........ well they also get a FUCKING F there. The only one of the promised incentives they actually delivered on was an open invitation to their "launch party" ending the IndieGogo campaign, which totally sucked. In fact, they were inviting people last minute to prevent their live stream from being a sad ghost town....... and is it really a launch party when they still haven't launched jack shit more than a year later?
Promises Kept:
- invitation to perhaps the saddest "launch party" in history, where nothing actually launched
- the old Fromage digital downloads were finally made available, but weren't uploaded to Dropbox until February 25, 2019, after about a year of complaints and questions. They're also of surprisingly poor quality (literally taped from TV with commercials left in) so we'll call that promise half kept, which I think is generous.
Promises Not Kept:
- launch of a new network to replace the old MuchMusic
- Live from Canada series
- 2 new Fromage series (Videos They Couldn't Make Today & The History of Music Videos)
- autographed postcards
- bring back classic shows including Fromage, Speakers Corner, Electric Circus, The New Music, Loud, Tree Toss and more
- Liana K Video Game Reviewers Boot Camp
- live phone call with Ed the Sock
- autographed photo of Ed the Sock with personalized message
- an Ed the Sock sock draw
- Ed the Sock socks
- Fromage DVDs
- monthly chats with Ed the Sock
- camping trip with Ed the Sock
- an official Ed the Sock sock puppet
- house party and live TV episode taping with Ed the Sock
One donation tier also promised that Ed would make a "No BS" 5-minute video bio of backers, "OFFER LIMITED TO 20 ORDERS - THESE THINGS TAKE A LOT OF WORK!"...... but after the first 20 sold he added six more anyway. He must have been telling the truth about how much work these short bios take though, otherwise why would all these backers still be waiting to get them in April, 2019?
Part of the Kerzners' problem is that they not only failed to deliver on the promises they made, they also kept piling on more rewards as their crowdfunding campaign went on, including the camping trip, house party, etc.
This also includes several special milestone goals the Kerzners announced as their crowdfunding continued.........
They promised a special Fromage episode for Drake's I'm Upset music video once the IndiGogo hit $15,000, but it never happened. When he was asked about it on the December 3, 2018 Kameo with Nevin Webster podcast in Kamloops, Steven said "look for it between Christmas and New Years", but it still has not happened.
At $20,000 they promised an Ed the Sock Bohemian Rhapsody video, but it never happened either.
Then at $25,000 Ed promised to post video of the time he reamed out the guy in charge on air.
This is a video he doesn't even have to make. He already HAS IT and he STILL couldn't be bothered to post it. Or maybe no video of him chewing out the brass at Much exists at all and he just made it up to try to make himself look cool. It's hard to tell exactly where the bullshit ends with this fucking clown.
So there we have it. Between 2016 and now the Kerzners made many promises related to their various crowdfunding campaigns and have not delivered on the vast majority of them. The few they did were delivered late. They have frequently lied about their intention or ability to follow through on what they promised, with many promises still not kept at all, even though they've pocketed a lot more money than they claimed they needed.
But perhaps there's a good, logical excuse for not delivering on their promises?
If you said "nope" then congratulations, you are a person with basic cognitive abilities. You've obviously been paying attention to the lessons we have learned so far about the Kerzners, and see that they habitually display an alarming lack of ethics and character.
But that doesn't mean they haven't TRIED many excuses over the last year. So........