Striking writers try move to Internet, supported by venture capital

Wow. Just how is this going to play out? (LATimes article seems to be behind free registration firewall; it’s titled, “Striking writers in talks to launch Web start-ups.”)

Dozens of striking film and TV writers are negotiating with venture capitalists to set up companies that would bypass the Hollywood studio system and reach consumers with video entertainment on the Web.

At least seven groups, composed of members of the striking Writers Guild of America, are planning to form Internet-based businesses that, if successful, could create an alternative economic model to the one at the heart of the walkout, now in its seventh week.

Three of the groups are working on ventures that would function much like United Artists, the production company created 80 years ago by Charlie Chaplin and other top stars who wanted to break free from the studios.

“It’s in development and rapidly incubating,” said Aaron Mendelsohn, a guild board member and co-creator of the “Air Bud” movies.

The prospects?

“I’m 100% confident that you will see some companies get formed,” said Todd Dagres, a Boston-based venture capitalist who has been flying to L.A. and meeting with top writers for weeks. “People have made up their minds.”

What effect this would have on the strike is unclear. So far, the percentage of the guild’s 10,000 striking writers who are in discussions with venture capitalists appears to be small. Any deal of this kind, however, could put pressure on the studios and help the writers’ public relations campaign. Writers who are talking to venture investors say the studios would suffer a brain drain if high-profile talents received outside funding and were no longer beholden to them.

Mendelsohn and others said they would stick with their ventures after the strike ended.

There’s a lot more in the article. Fascinating.

Hattip to PJNet.org.

Sphere: Related Content

By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:23 pm December 17th, 2007 in Social Issues, Economy, Writing, Media, Politics

Comments

2 Responses to “Striking writers try move to Internet, supported by venture capital”

1 Paul on December 17th, 2007 11:13 pm

It’s easy to forget that the traditional news and entertainment media have been a combination of content and distribution, and they controlled both. The print media have presses and trucks. The radio and TV networks have transmitters, cable systems and satellites.

The Internet decouples the content from the distribution, and makes distribution available to everyone. I spent my career with CompuServe, and we were one of the first folks to enable that decoupling. A few newspapers joined us in the experiment - like the Columbus Dispatch and the Washington Post - and that was 20 years ago. But the real revolution was the creation of a medium for the masses. Our most valuable content wasn’t produced by professional media organization, it was by our customers.

Hooray for the TV writers for figuring out that they might be able to do the TV production companies and networks what the musical artists have done to the record companies (who also had a lock on distribution until the Internet).

But the writers will find that they have the same challenge as the music industry - pricing and piracy. They will be tempted to look at the income statements of the networks and say, ‘hey, all that money could be ours.’ The truth is the shift to the Internet will radically decrease the aggregate income of the whole industry in the first wave, and later create a hypercompetitive marketplace that makes it hard to anyone to make money. And unlike the musical artists, the screenwriters can’t do concert tours to make up the difference.

At this moment, the Internet may still lack the capacity to take on load that would be created by a wholesale shift of video programming from traditional broadcast media. That probably means that for a lucky few who figure it out early, there’s a lot of money to be made right now. Everyone else will get shut out. Think of what it was like to get a show on prime-time TV in the 1960s when there was only three networks.

The internet will eventually became a seamless network of broadcast (via satellite) and on-demand communications channels, and the distinction between TV networks and Internet networks will evaporate.

Meanwhile, the transition will be fun to watch.
2 Jill Miller Zimon on December 18th, 2007 6:54 am

Thanks, Paul, you raise a lot of good thinking points.

The only thing I would say is that, as someone who really loves to write, when you aren’t able to do that - it’s suffocating. So, I imagine they are at the point of asphyxiation when it comes to their creative essence.