Crew Meeting
The crew name was decided by vote: V-Live.
Still, I couldn't shake a slight unease. No matter how I looked at it, I was certain some people would try to abbreviate the crew name and end up calling us "Bra." Especially somewhere like Pan-beo-gal — that was a guarantee.
But there was no overturning a result already settled by vote. We locked in V-Live as the official crew name and moved on to the next step.
"We should set up an official fan café and a YouTube channel too. The fan café especially is important — how should we handle the staff structure? Does everyone already have a stream manager?"
Once the name was settled, progress came fast. Miho was the only one who already had a stream manager, so we temporarily put her in charge of café administration. After all, streamers who needed to focus on broadcasting would struggle to handle café management on top of everything else.
"I'm planning to hire a stream manager soon myself, so that should lighten the admin load a bit. Or we could hire a dedicated café manager separately."
The temporary manager Oh Yeong-jun had introduced had, unfortunately, finished out the agreed period and moved on. Now I needed to hire a proper full-time stream manager of my own.
Hiring a manager was a genuinely important decision. Individual quality varied, of course, but a good manager did far more than just moderate chat — they supported the streamer's activities and provided real broadcasting assistance. Lucy's old manager had been like that. Whenever something needed looking up, the link was delivered instantly. They knew every platform controversy cold and steered clear of anything that could become a problem with almost supernatural precision. And yet they never inserted their own personality into the stream; even when they had to type in chat, they read the room perfectly and kept the atmosphere light.
Big-agency streamers even put managers on salary. Yeah — managers really do matter.
For a stream averaging under fifty viewers, you could get by without one. Above that, though, the inconvenience was real. At the same time, I had to stay aware of the reverse risk of hiring the wrong person. Managers with no social awareness could kill a stream's vibe by constantly asserting themselves, and the more malicious ones approached streamers of the opposite sex with ulterior motives. There had even been cases where the relationship soured and the manager leaked the streamer's private life.
I'll put up a separate hiring notice for this later…
As for the YouTube channel, I decided to handle it myself for now. There was nothing to upload yet anyway — we just needed the channel created. Once the crew grew big enough, we could pool money and hire an editor.
Next on the agenda: everyone's broadcast schedules.
"Unless someone has personal circumstances that make it impossible, I'd prefer that crew members' stream times don't overlap."
My approach was simple. How do you maximize a crew's effectiveness? In that sense, we needed to stagger our broadcast hours — even if only a little. The reason was straightforward: that was how you created viewer spillover between crew members.
Say Miho and I both went live at 7 p.m. Viewers would simply go to their main streamer's broadcast. Pangea TV's service supported up to three simultaneous streams, so multi-view was possible — but chat volume, Candy donations, and the overall crew effect would all take a serious hit.
But if Miho and I streamed at different times? Viewers left stranded after I signed off wouldn't all migrate, but a substantial number would head over to fellow crew member Miho's stream. That was a proper crew effect.
And that wasn't all. Spreading crew members' broadcast hours across a wide range also prevented viewers from drifting toward streams outside our crew. No matter when someone logged onto the platform, one of our crew's broadcasts would always be live. The so-called crew revolving-door effect.
"Whoa. Our leader's got a real brain on her. This is exactly why I decided to stick to you like glue."
"Though the naming sense is a bit…"
"Seo-a, so how are we splitting the times?"
This part required mutual compromise and consideration. The streaming scene had a golden time slot when the most viewers stayed on the platform — roughly from 7 p.m. to midnight, when office workers got off work. Naturally, streamers clustered their broadcasts in that window.
"Everyone needs to look at this coldly. This isn't about feelings — it's about reality."
Before assigning anyone's schedule, I pulled up the Candy Calculator site and checked each crew member's broadcast data. The Candy Calculator wasn't just for tracking donation totals. Viewer counts, subscriptions, ups, favorites — nearly every streamer metric lived there.
Seo-a — 1,247
Lucy — 215
Miho — 153
Mayo — 75
Those were the crew's average viewer counts for October. I'd drawn attention through the Wooga-dol audition and pumped my numbers with a few content pieces, but even accounting for that, the gap between me and the other crew members was massive. By any measure, me taking the golden time slot was inevitable.
"So that leaves the rest of us. What time slot would work for me?"
"Unnie Miho, I'd recommend late night into the early morning."
I had a clear reason for recommending that window to Miho. Given how much sexy appeal her streams leaned on, a small, dedicated core of viewers suited her better than a large crowd. And that time slot was perfect for building exactly that kind of elite fandom — the late-night hours when the broth got rich and concentrated. Her audience already skewed older on average, so the late shift fit naturally.
"That actually makes a lot of sense. Alright, I'll try it for about a month. If the results are iffy, we can adjust again, right?"
"Of course. Theory and practice are different things — we identify the problems and fix them step by step…"
With Miho locked in, I recommended morning-to-late-morning hours for Lucy.
"Is there a specific advantage to this time slot for me, the way there was for Unnie Miho?"
"It's because Unnie Lucy is boring."
"……"
For the first time, I landed a direct hit on Lucy's soft spot. It couldn't be helped. Business and personal feelings had to stay cleanly separated.
I recommended a news broadcast format for her.
"Honestly, Unnie Lucy needs to develop her talk skills more. You can't survive in streaming on singing alone. But luckily, you've got a great voice. You research hot topics thoroughly, organize the material, and deliver information to viewers every morning as a news broadcast."
News broadcasts had been a proven comfort-food content format in streaming for ages. Most viewers were commuting to work at that hour and connected in radio mode. In that meta, Lucy's beautiful voice was a clear advantage. On top of that, a news broadcast didn't require making viewers laugh. All you needed was a pleasant voice reading out the hot topics people wanted to know about.
"You get practice speaking to a large audience, and if you do the research every day, you'll naturally learn the platform and the major streamers inside out. I think it's exactly the kind of broadcast Unnie Lucy needs right now."
"And this has nothing to do with me being a boring streamer?"
"Ahem."
"I'm kidding. Thanks for thinking it through. Alright — I'll go with your plan, Seo-a."
Sincerity always got through. Lucy agreed to follow my lead.
That left only Mayo.
"So Mayo automatically gets lunch through the afternoon?"
"Yeah. I've got a reason for recommending this slot for Mayo too."
What were Mayo's strengths? Outstanding stream sense and that infuriatingly addictive Gen-Z character. Setting those aside, the first thing I'd point to was an appetite that would make a yellow dog weep with envy. Give her mayonnaise and she'd demolish anything. Pre-regression Mayo had even made a name for herself with grotesque pinball mukbang content.
If we were an idol-concept crew, something like grotesque mukbang would be unthinkable — but we're just streamers.
Mayo's grotesque pinball mukbang would hit perfectly during the hungry lunch hours. Or wait — would it kill people's appetites and backfire instead?
Beyond that, it was best to place Mayo in a time slot adjacent to mine. Comparing weight classes right now, I was the biggest and Mayo sat at the opposite extreme, which meant she was the one who needed spillover viewers the most.
"Uuuugh… being smart is so annoying."
"Great. So Mayo's on board too?"
And just like that, I had everyone's agreement. Whew — all that advance prep had been worth it. Broadcast schedules were an extremely sensitive issue for streamers, so I'd studied hard to persuade them all.
With that, the crew's broadcast times were locked. The big mountains were more or less behind us. What remained were the smaller details — checking each other's off days, making sure avatar outfits didn't clash, talking through planned content and upcoming events.
"Ah!"
"Hmm? What is it?"
"Did you remember something important?"
Just as Lucy said — I'd almost forgotten to mention something critical. I addressed everyone with a serious expression.
"Does everyone know how to play Minecraft?"
"……?"
The sudden Minecraft talk left them all puzzled. Without further explanation, I told them to start watching Minecraft videos carefully and actually play the game for a while.
"There's talk that a massive Minecraft server is coming to Pangea TV. It can't hurt to prepare ahead of time."
The virtual scene's ultra-premium event — just over a month away.
An opportunity we absolutely could not afford to miss.