The CEO of Ozy Media connected Monday called the company's announcement past week that it was shutting down "premature" and that aft gathering with advertisers and investors that it would proceed to operate.
"We person thing peculiar here," Carlos Watson told CNBC connected Monday morning.
The committee of directors of Ozy emailed a connection Friday saying the institution was ceasing operations little than a week aft a New York Times file raised questions astir the media organization's claims of millions of viewers and readers, portion besides pointing retired a imaginable lawsuit of securities fraud.
The communicative triggered canceled shows, an interior investigation, capitalist interest and high-level departures astatine the company.
The Times communicative besides said Ozy's chief operating officer and co-founder, Samir Rao, impersonated a YouTube enforcement connected a telephone with Goldman Sachs portion attempting to rise wealth from the concern bank. Regarding that call, Watson said: "I don't know. I wasn't there." He past went connected to accidental that they yet "figured retired what happened," but did not explicate further. "Look—it's heartbreaking, it's wrong, it's not good, it's not OK," Watson said. "I emotion Goldman, I worked there, I've got a batch of friends there."
Mountain View, California-based Ozy has agelong been accused of inflating its assemblage size. Watson erstwhile claimed successful a tweet that Ozy had 25 cardinal subscribers to its newsletter. The New York Times, with a overmuch bigger marque presence, says it has 15 cardinal newsletter readers—and much than 30 cardinal views connected YouTube. The Times said less than 500,000 radical went to Ozy's website successful June and July, according to Comscore data.
On Thursday, Marc Lasry, the hedge-fund billionaire and Milwaukee Bucks co-owner who had been named Ozy's president successful September, resigned, citing Ozy's request for idiosyncratic experienced successful situation absorption and investigations. He remained an investor.
A high-profile employee, erstwhile BBC anchor Katty Kay, resigned earlier successful the week, and an aboriginal investor, a venture superior firm, gave up its Ozy shares. The committee had reportedly hired a instrumentality steadfast to reappraisal Ozy's concern activities.
Cable web A&E pulled a peculiar connected mental health hosted by Watson that was scheduled for Monday night, and Watson stepped down from hosting a documentary Emmys awards amusement Wednesday night.
Even with each that took spot past week, Watson said the institution would determination guardant with the assurance of investors and advertisers.
"I precise genuinely consciousness similar we person a meaningful, important dependable successful what is possibly the astir transformative decennary successful a fractional century," Watson said Monday. "And I privation Ozy to beryllium astir and beryllium a portion of it."
Watson, a erstwhile cable-news commentator and host, founded Ozy successful 2013.
The website Crunchbase, which tracks firm fund-raising, said Ozy had raised much than $70 cardinal from investors arsenic of precocious 2019.
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