In the latest tale of financial woes for the conservative streaming platform The Daily Wire, Bentkey, their children’s entertainment division, has been shut down.
The kids-focused branch of the company being shut down affects roughly 25% of their total staff. This comes on the heels of The Daily Wire’s co-founder and CEO Jeremy Boreing stepping down. The Daily Wire has also hired a bankruptcy lawyer.
This means that Chip Chilla, the token show on Bentkey, will not have any future seasons – at least not unless it gets sold to another company. Chip Chilla was a children’s show about a family of homeschooled chinchillas. The show was very clearly inspired by Bluey, the hit Australian children’s show about a family of dogs.
There were other shows on Bentkey as well, but most of them were shows and movies that had been produced by other companies and were only temporarily being licensed to The Daily Wire. These shows are not in trouble due to Bentkey’s closure, but it is a problem for Chip Chilla and the smattering of other in-house productions at Bentkey.
These mass-layoffs and cancelations are not the first sign we’ve had that The Daily Wire was in big trouble. Last year, we reported on the cancelation of The Daily Wire’s anti-woke Snow White & the Evil Queen (which was originally meant to be the first feature film to drop on Bentkey) as a result of internal drama and the firing of that film’s star, Brett Cooper. Earlier this year, we were the first outlet to report on the cancelation of Mr. Birchum, the adult animated show that was disliked by both the left and the right.
Many users have speculated as to what is the reason for The Daily Wire’s financial woes, with some blaming the company for spending too much money producing films and shows. Over $100 million dollars was dumped into Bentkey, with almost another $100 million dumped into the upcoming Pendragon adaptation, a show that was supposed to air in 2024, but still has not gotten a release date.
Others blamed The Daily Wire’s political pundits for becoming increasingly disrespectful to their audiences and betraying their supposed principles of free speech. Matt Walsh has in the past few years increasingly been attacking people who enjoy anime or video games. Meanwhile, The Daily Wire has also fired employees for being critical of Israel, such as Candace Owens. Candace Owens would later make videos on YouTube criticizing The Daily Wire for not supporting free speech for pro-Palestine protesters on colleges.
Because of this, thousands of people on social media platform X have taken to spamming the replies of popular Daily Wire host Michael Knowles, asking him to leave The Daily Wire.
For now, Bentkey is still accessible, though this is likely to change in the coming weeks. No new content is being added due to the layoffs of everyone involved.
