Why Did OSBOURNE MEDIA HOUSE Shut Down After Just A Few Months? JACK OSBOURNE Explains

Jack Osbourne, son of Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne, has explained the shutdown of the Osbourne Media House, which called itself a multimedia hub for everything Osbourne, with a wide range of content that included podcasts.

Described as a "one-stop shop for all Osbourne family entertainment," Osbourne Media House was officially launched in April 2024 with programs including "The Osbournes" podcast and "The Madhouse Chronicles", a series hosted by Ozzy and his best friend, guitarist Billy Morrison.

On Friday (January 3),Jack released a lengthy video via his YouTube channel in which he discussed the challenges Osbourne Media House faced in its early days and the circumstances that led to the decision to "hit the pause button" on the company after just a few months. He said in part (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "So it's no secret Osbourne Media House shut down. The reason Osbourne Media shut down, it's not a simple answer; it's a very long-winded answer, but I'm gonna try and make it as short and as concise and as easy to digest.

"Firstly, it had nothing to do with our viewers. I mean, not that that would have been a huge reason for us to shut it down. But I learned so much about the loyalty of our fans over the last year and a half. And it has been such an amazing experience to remove a network or a buffer between the family and our audience. For the last 21 years, myself, my mom, my sister, we've all worked for networks, we've worked for people to release content. And so there was always a middleman. We never had direct ability to create exactly what we wanted and then release it to our fans the way we wanted it, how we wanted it. And so it was an amazing experience learning how to do that. The big thing is just that — we were learning how to do this.

"I started Osbourne Media House on a just an idea," he continued. "I saw the way media was going, how TV was drying up — it is drying up. I saw that creative content really, at least in my opinion, is the way forward for people like myself. I am not an actor, I am not a musician. I have always worked in television, either in front of the camera as talent, and I use that word loosely, or as a producer. But TV's changing. The money just isn't there anymore. And the kind of post-COVID shift has really been affected not only with me, but through the entire industry. Content is just changing. And so I wanted to change with it. And I thought creating some kind of media company where we were creating and distributing our own content, we had a paywall, we had OsbourneMediaHouse.com —the vision that is Osbourne Media House was something that myself and my team, we kind of brought out of nothing. It was self-funded. So my mom, myself, my father, we all put in funds to make this thing work. And if we're being totally honest, we bit off more than we could chew. It was a behemoth, and we had to learn from our mistakes as we went along. And while we were learning from our mistakes, we were relying on information from other people about, 'Okay, how do we grow this? How do we change the direction?' Because the dollars and cents in the podcasting world changed as we were building this, so we had to change with it. Unfortunately, we didn't change fast enough and we hit a wall. And my parents made the decision. They were, like, 'Hey, listen, we don't wanna keep financially dumping money into this because we don't see this as something that makes sense for us right now.' And that was purely based on work schedule for both of my parents. It was based on my dad's health and his ability to participate. And it was based on everyone just kind of having life."

Jack added: "My sister, she enjoyed it. She liked participating in the podcast, but she's got a baby, she's got a family and she wants to kind of focus on that. And my mom had a lot of commitments elsewhere. And so it became very difficult to kind of corral everyone to one place to create the content that we needed. We discovered that the content that best performed with 'The Osbournes' was the current stuff. People don't wanna sit and always listen to us talk about frickin', 'Oh, what's your favorite ice cream?' Like, whatever. I think that our viewers, you guys, I really feel like you guys enjoyed hearing us talk about the stuff that was happening today and now and keeping it current. And I enjoyed talking about that the most. It was the things that I relate to. It's the stuff that I get excited about.

"So, [it was down to] scheduling, the financials of it, and I think those two things were really weighing on everyone. So there was a decision that was made that unless we kind of figured it out by August that we were gonna have to hit the pause button on Osbourne Media House, and that's what happened."

"The Osbournes", which became the highest-rated original program in MTV's history, started in 2002 and ended in 2005. The "fly-on-the-wall" TV series followed the lives of Ozzy and his family, including Sharon's battle with cancer, as well as younger children Kelly and Jack Osbourne's stints in rehabilitation for drug and alcohol abuse.

"The Osbournes" was credited with being the first show where cameras followed celebrities around and led to a number of copycats like A&E's "Gene Simmons Family Jewels", which followed the life of KISS bassist Gene Simmons and his family, and A&E's "Growing Up Twisted", about the family of TWISTED SISTER frontman Dee Snider.

Since "The Osbournes" concluded, Jack has worked as a producer and TV host of travel, fitness and paranormal investigation shows, including "Jack Osbourne: Adrenaline Junkie", "Ozzy & Jack's World Detour" and "Portals To Hell".