On Monday, July 9th, Jeremy Noell announced that Star City Games would be ending its daily news show, Split Second, after nearly two years.
Noell, Assistant Marketing Manager for SCG and the host of Split Second, told Hipsters that Split Second’s cancellation was due to a change in the company’s video strategy. “SCG simply decided reallocate some of their video production resources [to] other programs,” he said. One such show, Flashback, premiered for SCG’s premium subscribers on July 3rd.
Split Second was conceived in 2016 as a Magic daily news show in the vein of IGN’s Daily Fix or Nerdist News. At the time, Noell saw that there was very little straight Magic news coverage. Instead, most news content was combined with opinion, but he thought that “a short video series . . . would be great for people who weren’t able to check out everything that went on in the Magic world that day.”
“I really wanted to make a show for players who worked or went to school all day and didn’t have time to keep up with the news during their daily lives,” he said.
Noell researched wrote most of the shows himself, with some assistance from Cedric Phillips and Danny West, while relying on SCG’s video production and graphic design departments for editing and animation. Episodes covered a broad variety of topics, from breaking news to the newest episode of your favorite podcast, and generally lasted between two and five minutes.
Community members, including yours truly, mourned the announcement of Split Second’s cancellation. Like many others, Wedge of the Mana Source replied: “I loved Split Second. Sad to hear it’s gone . . . Can’t wait to see what’s next.” Adam Styborski, Marketing Director for TCGPlayer, noted that Split Second “took more work than most realize. It was great,” he wrote, “and I hope this means something else awesome gets produced instead.”
Despite the end of Split Second, Noell will remain at Star City Games as its Assistant Marketing Manager. He didn’t provide any details on whether he’ll be starring in a new series any time soon, but says that he thinks Split Second was a success. “I believe it accomplished what I set out to do,” he told Hipsters. “I’m proud of the work that everyone here at SCG did on the show. I hope that we can take the resources we used for it and put out other great videos that players and viewers will enjoy.”