Who abandoned their core audience and paid the price for it?

little website called digg, did a major site refresh to increase site revenue without considering the impact and lost their entire user base to MassimoL essentially overnight.

i just learned from a tiktok that applebee’s tried to become a club at night to attract younger customers but no one wanted to go hang out at applebee’s and all the old people who used to go go applebee’s didn’t like that it turned into a club at night so they stopped going and now no one likes applebee’s

JCPenney changed their stores about 12 years ago to go after a cooler audience. Turns out the cool kids didn’t want to shop there and loyal JCP shoppers didn’t want to anymore either. They’ve been trying to undo this for years but still struggling.

Discovery, History TV18 and National Geographic.
Once Discover’s Man Vs Wild got really famous and got them a lot of TRP, they thought this was it. Every one of these channels came out with their own version of MvsW; some really stupid. A history channel playing this bullshit is of course going to drive the geeks away. Producers would run these shows multiple times in a day as if they had nothing to show other than this, no science and engineering to explain. It was painful to not get to see my favourite science shows on these channels anymore.

Edited to add that a reply to this comment by u/mixingmemory has a link to great insight into this and about some idiot CEO David Zaslav.

The Raiders. Used to have a great home field advantage in Oakland. Now every game in Vegas is half filled with away fans.

MTV. Loved watching music videos and the occasional news, Behind the Music, etc, but their main focus was music videos. Then, for some insane reason, they ditched their tried and true format and became a reality show nightmare. They lost it all. I don’t even know if MTV is still around?

Tumblr

Unity software.

I’m surprised to not see blackberry here.
They had cornered the high paying business users of mobile phones.
They wanted to become mass market though and came up with ads like we are the blackberry boys.
Got kicked out of both the categories.

Onlyfans briefly banning sexually explicit material on their service.

That’s, like, your entire business model.

This YouTuber called Ray William Johnson.

Guy was one of the top YouTubers with a huge following, and then abandoned most of his shows to chase bigger roles in ShowBiz.

Blizzard entertainment.

Olive garden….was simple menu that was solid for casual night or easy lunch…..got sad that pop culture made fun of it as fuax fancy……and actually tried to get fuax fancy….should have never got rid of the artery clogging chicken con broccoli lmao.

Cartoon Network

The Witcher series (or any beloved franchise where directors and writers think they can do better than the source material).

Note to writers and directors out there: if you’re adapting something to the big screen that people absolutely love, understand that in their eyes you absolutely cannot do better than the source material.

Don’t have to go 1:1 with the source material but man, it’s so crazy that people will rubber stamp the deviation from the original IP so often. If it has a huge following, stick to the fuckin source and you’ll be able to milk a cash cow for years. Deviating is such a huge risk and I can’t think of any series or movie that has done this and pulled it off / survived, so it’s just weird that directors and writers continue to think they are gonna be the one to pull it off.

Ja Rule. You can argue that he originally abandoned his hardcore style from VVV, but with his mainstream success between Rule 3:36 & Pain Is Love, he felt the heat with 50 Cent & G-Unit blowing up & switched up from his radio-friendly sound and flopped with Blood In My Eye.

Rob Thomas (not the singer) with Veronica Mars. He had fans crowdfund the movie and then obliterated the first season of the series reboot. It was a slap in the face to all the loyal Marshmallows. He thought he knew better and in the end, thought his vision would be restored but fans aren’t so forgiving. This fan isn’t, that’s for sure!

Volition rebooting Saint’s Row fits the bill. They removed tons of elements from the earlier games that fans loved, AND allowed the change to become a core aspect of the game’s pre-launch promotion. The result was a game that reviewed and sold poorly, and Volition closing its doors a year after release.

I will never turn down a chance to talk shit about the reboot of Dexter.

Game of Thrones. They shit the bed so hard in the last season that no one thinks of it fondly. You hear of people rewatching epic shows over and over again. I don’t know a single person who has gone back to GoT. I tried to watch the first season again but I was still too mad and hurt about the ending.