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Striking TV Writers Gravitate to the Web
by
findingDulcinea Staff
As dramas and talk shows dry up, and pressured networks ponder a season rife with new reality shows, writers look to Internet start-ups to evade the Hollywood studio system.
30-Second Summary
The Los Angeles Times reports that dozens of Writers Guild of America strikers are negotiating with Silicon Valley investors to set up Web-based video entertainment companies.
Although the number of writers engaged in these initial talks is relatively small, the Times notes that the prospective loss of talent could pressure studios to reach an agreement with the Guild and end the nearly seven-week-old strike.
Indeed, the impact of these new Web ventures could have repercussions beyond the current walkout. Facebook director Jim Breyer, and his venture firm Accel Partners, has been mulling over content deals that would rely strictly on his Web site’s platform.
“It is likely we will make investments in Los Angeles screenwriter/content-oriented companies in 2008,” Breyer told the Times. Breyer and Facebook are apparently not alone among investors looking to harness the dormant writers.
This latest development comes nearly two weeks after the four major networks—ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox—announced plans to increase their reality television offerings by 50 percent.
The push for reality programming could allow these new ventures to snap up bored audiences, in addition to wooing the younger, more Internet-savvy viewers who already watch Web-based entertainment.
"We are one Connecticut hedge-fund checkbook, one Silicon Valley server farm and two creators away from having channels on YouTube, where the studios don't own anything," the executive produce of one TV show told the Los Angeles Times.
Although the number of writers engaged in these initial talks is relatively small, the Times notes that the prospective loss of talent could pressure studios to reach an agreement with the Guild and end the nearly seven-week-old strike.
Indeed, the impact of these new Web ventures could have repercussions beyond the current walkout. Facebook director Jim Breyer, and his venture firm Accel Partners, has been mulling over content deals that would rely strictly on his Web site’s platform.
“It is likely we will make investments in Los Angeles screenwriter/content-oriented companies in 2008,” Breyer told the Times. Breyer and Facebook are apparently not alone among investors looking to harness the dormant writers.
This latest development comes nearly two weeks after the four major networks—ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox—announced plans to increase their reality television offerings by 50 percent.
The push for reality programming could allow these new ventures to snap up bored audiences, in addition to wooing the younger, more Internet-savvy viewers who already watch Web-based entertainment.
"We are one Connecticut hedge-fund checkbook, one Silicon Valley server farm and two creators away from having channels on YouTube, where the studios don't own anything," the executive produce of one TV show told the Los Angeles Times.
Headline Link: Writers look to the Web
Although Silicon Valley investors have traditionally shunned investment in entertainment start-ups, the $1.65 billion Google Inc. shelled out for YouTube last year has prompted many firms to reassess their priorities. A small number of sites have already received backing from venture capitalists this year, including FunnyorDie.com, co-founded by Will Ferrell, and MyDamnChannel.com, launched by former MTV executive Rob Barnett.
Source: Los Angeles Times (may require free registration)
Background: The coming flood of reality TV
The four major networks—ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox—are planning a 50 percent increase in reality programming, with as many as 27 hours a week scheduled for the first quarter of 2008. These shows are relatively cheap to produce, and generally do not employ union-represented writers.
Source: The New York Times
Historical Context: The 1988 strike and ‘Cops’
The 1988 Writers Guild strike lasted for five months, from March 7 to Aug. 7, 1988, and over 9,000 movie and television writers participated. The main contractual disagreements concerned the writers’ residuals for hour-long shows syndicated in the United States and abroad. The 1988 writers’ walkout is the longest in history, surpassing the 1960 writers-studios standoff by one day. An Aug. 8, 1988 article from The New York Times provides the details.
Source: The New York Times
“Cops” creator John Langley had been pitching his gritty, real-life show concept for five years before Fox finally picked it up during the 1988 strike. “A series with no narrator, no host, no script, no re-enactments sounded very good to them at the time,” Langley told the Associated Press. However, that strike didn’t release the same deluge of reality shows as has the current walkout. When the 1988 standoff began in March, filming on many sitcoms and dramas had already finished.
Source: International Herald Tribune
Analysis: The strike hits network pocketbooks
Columnist Nikki Finke, who writes about the strike on her blog Deadline Hollywood Daily, talks to NPR about how the strike is financially impacting the networks: “Game shows and reality shows … they’re not going to have the same ad rates [as late night shows. Networks] have lost a ton of money on the late night advertising that has gone out the window, because here’s one of the facts of life that your audience may or may not know: there’s such a thing as ‘give-backs.’ If a network promises [advertisers] a certain audience, and a certain size of that audience, they have to make good on it. So if suddenly you have a sea of repeats of Jay Leno and David Letterman, that means that you’re going to have to give back money. Now the moguls are going around and saying ‘We’re going to have a great fourth quarter for 2007.’ But that’s a little like robbing Peter to pay Paul, because they are going to have to pay for it dearly in ’08. That’s something that I don’t know if shareholders of these big media companies are aware of.”
Source: NPR
Nikki Finke provides up-to-date coverage of the writers’ strike on her blog, Deadline Hollywood Daily.
Source: Deadline Hollywood Daily
Related Topics: Viewers venture onto the Internet
According to PRWeek magazine, the standoff between writers and studios could be a boon to non-unionized, Web-based programs. Featured on sites such as ManiaTV.com, SuperDeluxe.com and NGTV.com, these Internet shows, or “webisodes,” have been gaining a certain cachet with younger more Web-savvy consumers. Nonetheless, Jack Myers, publisher of media analysis site JackMyers.com, points out that “the Internet alone can't replace the publicity impact of Letterman or Leno, or the format and content of mainstream, scripted TV. Nor can it take the place of advertisers' $64 billion in annual television budgets.”
Source: PRWeek
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