“It’s time to get back in the fight…”
Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing held a public town hall on Wednesday, outlining plans for future children’s entertainment.
Boreing referenced the recently exposed video of Disney executives planning LGBTQ characters for future entertainment. He mentioned the executives’ predations on children, and said, “we are going to build alternatives”.
Boreing announced the launch of Daily Wire Kids (DW Kids). The CEO was adamant the content decision was not simply in reaction to the leaked Disney footage. The Disney footage did speed up the timing of the announcement, however.
“[Disney] is hell-bent on taking your children away from you. What they did today is expose it to the whole world. We want to say there is an alternative coming.”
Boreing announced that DW Kids hired two writers, Eric Branscom and Ethan Nicole. The men were hired three months ago in initial planning, and they came directly from the popular satire website, the Babylon Bee. Both were also writers on the popular Christian children’s show VeggieTales – giving them deep experience in animated kids content. Boreing said the pair were six scripts into their first DW Kids show “Chilla Time!”.
Chilla Time
Chilla Time is a homeschooling family of Chinchillas. Boreing lightly described the new show, “They don’t homeschool their kids in the normal way. Not a lot of sitting around at tables, arts and crafts. [The show is] completely immersive insanity.”
Much of this content will be historical in nature, “When the Chilla parents want to teach their Chilla kids about George Washington, suddenly they find themselves fighting in the Revolutionary War.”
Boreing described some of the underlying motivations for Chilla Time, “Our goal is not to make a piece of educational content, our goal is to make some really great kids content kids actually want to see…but where they gain some perspective, they gain a baseline understanding of cultural literacy.”
Doodles with Noodles
The second children’s show announced at the Daily Wire town hall was “Doodles with Noodles”. Described as a “live action puppet show”, writer Ethan Nicole will teach kids how to draw alongside the puppet “Noodles”. The show is designed to teach kids the skill of drawing, while also being entertained.
When will DW Kids release the first show?
The goal of the DW Kids production team is to have “some kids offering” by the end of 2022.
Animated content like Chilla Time will be launched by spring of 2023. Boreing said, “it takes about twelve months to animate content, animation is much slower than physical content”.
By spring of 2023, Boreing expects to have four children’s series available on the Daily Wire app.
How will DW Kids content be funded?
The Daily Wire has spent over 7-figures on children’s programming to date. Boreing committed to spending over $100 million dollars on DW Kids content over the next three years.
Boreing emphasized the company’s commitment to financial backing, “We are going to pay for it because we believe there is an underserved audience that is longing for these alternatives’ ‘.
The implied funding for DW Kids would stem from Dailywire.com paid subscribers. The Daily Wire uses a subscription-based revenue model to fund their daily activities.
“We are betting [our company] on the idea that Americans have been waiting for these alternatives”.
The Daily Wire took investment from a “high net worth family in Texas” in 2015. The total amount of this investment was $7.5 million to help launch the Daily Wire. Of this initial seed capital, the Daily Wire spent $4.7 million in 14 months. After 14 months, the company became cash flow positive, according to Boreing.
Boreing said, “Since 2016 we’ve powered all of the growth of the company out of our cash flow…we never wanted to go back to the investor well.” He wants to avoid the “non-profit” mentality of “lose, complain and beg for donations”.
Boreing did not take the option of public investment off the table, saying “you have to have access to capital markets, eventually, to scale…almost all major for-profit companies operating at scale have had to access capital.” Boreing said his executive teams have had discussions on when or if they would access public investment, but as of 2022, they are not looking for investors.
Children’s Safety and Parents Trust are at the core of programming
The safety of children and respect for parental values was highlighted in Wednesday’s announcement. Boreing emphasized kids content has “underlying values that Christian’s all agree on”, but would also not be overly “polemic” (meaning a direct attack or assault; aggressively making over-the-top, preachy conservative content).
“We will play it much safer than with our adult content…”, Boreing said. “Why? Because you are supposed to give kids a safe environment to be kids. You are not supposed to be challenging kids with radical new ideas. You are supposed to be able to trust your kids in a culture.”
Boreing wrapped up a monologue on the predatory nature of companies like Disney by saying “you will be able to trust DW Kids content with your kids”.
Why is the Daily Wire building Children’s Entertainment?
This new foray is part of the overarching philosophy of the Daily Wire. They not only want to pursue political commentary, but also have a say in building culture through products, movies, shows and books.
“We are going to do something different, something conservatives have not done in my lifetime. We’re going to build a future. Not lament the past, not grieve the past…”, Boreing said. “There is so much opportunity in the hubris of the Left. They keep tearing our culture apart and [are] paying no economic consequence.”
Boreing wants to set a positive vision for the future, unlike past conservative pursuits that simply “take donations and lose”. “It’s time to get back in the fight.”, he said.
Q1 2022 content released by the Daily Wire
Boreing outlined the success the company had had in the first quarter of 2022. These successes include:
- Creation of best-selling children’s book Johnny the Walrus
- Launched the Ben Shapiro series The Search
- Launched the Third Thursday Book Club with Ben Shapiro
- Premiered the film Shut In
- Premiered the TV series The Hyperions
- Truth Yeller with Adam Carola
- Creating a new docu-podcast China: The Enemy Within
- Launching Fauci Unmasked docu-podcast; starring Michael Knowles
- Launching sports talk show Crain and Company
- Built a brand new studio in south Florida
- Added 14,000 more square feet of office space in Nashville, TN
- Onboarded 75,000 new Daily Wire subscribers
- Became the 7th largest podcast company according to PodTrack
- Had the 15th consecutive month as #1 most engaged publisher on Facebook
- $100 million in annual revenue for first time in the company’s history
- Helped elect a governor in Virginia off the reporting of Luke Rosiak, covering the Loudoun County school rape cover-up
- Suing the federal government over unconstitutional vaccine mandates
- Launched a razor company, Jeremy’s Razors; with 45,000 subscribers in the first day of operating
Future updates on DW Kids programming will be covered as they are reported.
