I constantly oscillate between "stop thinking of CR like a normal entertainment company" and "CR is way to established as a company in the entertainment world to be this bad at the most basic things".
Now I fully understand that I am in a weird position of having a significantly larger than average amount of experience and contact with the media world. Not the "fun" stuff like creation or production, but dumb workaday clerical and paper-pushing stuff. But the fact remains that there are industry (and general business) norms to help prevent common errors, make sure things happen correctly, and meet whatever standard you are trying to present. So it always stands out to me when CR doesn't seem to make improvements in their processes.
To be clear: I do not mean their primary media productions like actual plays, books, or merch.
Let me use the Fan Art Gallery on the CR website as an example.
Originally CR would highlight fan art the cast liked during their mid-show break, but legal concerns lead them to hosting the Fan Art Gallery on their website. Going forward artists would need to submit their art to the website to be shown there. This is a smarter way to go about this! You would think this would lend itself to improvement in the process over time. However ... there seems to be little or no checking being done between the submission and publishing of the Gallery.
So, what would some process like this look like knowing you as a company are giving "approval" to something? (Posting something on your own platform carries a lot more weight to your audience than just retweeting/rebloging something on social media.)
Eliminate anything that's already been posted, and maybe hold off on re-featuring anyone that's been featured very recently or very often.
Look at the artist's other works to see if it's consistent with their style(s) or other flags it might not be their own art.
Look at the artist's social media to see if it's safe enough to publicly link to. (You never know if someone's account got hacked or they're posting things you don't want to be associated with.)
Verify with the artist that they are the one that submitted the piece and they are still okay with it being featured.
Unfortunately CR has run unto a few of these more than a few times. I think I've seen one piece 4 or 5 times, once I think in back to back weeks. They've been caught out by AI art (that they thankfully fixed). People still continuing to submit art that is not their own, even though this system was put in place to combat that. And there is a particular artist that has been included no less than 10 times in just the last year that has violently threatened and harassed members of the cast and crew on and off for multiple years, across multiple screen names, and multiple social media platforms. Like ... don't y'all have a list of known people to look out for? That is like interacting with the public as a media entity 101.
This is a small slice of similar patterns across many small things they do that I don't really want to point out because ... realistically I'm probably one of few people that see them so glaringly. And that is only because I've spent to long working with these kinds of processes and improving them to make them more consistent (and/or safer).
