Writers on strike moving to Web

The debate over how to pay writers and split the royalties when their work goes online has been a heated discussion we are sure. I'm sure it is difficult to come up with a fair and agreeable payout, when no one is really sure what the revenues could be or what the future holds for digital content on the web. No big studio or network wants to be locked into a percentage deal or terms, when they have no idea themselves how the content could be used and how much they can make off it. We covered the writer strike before and continue to follow the story today.

So what is a writer supposed to do during this downtime? Well, according to the Los Angeles Times, and it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure this one out, writers are pursuing deals to develop shows for the web and looking for money to facilitate this creation of content. The development makes us think about what happened in the newspaper industry, when writers during the first dot-com era launched news sites like Salon.com and the like. It's probably not a far fetch that we will see a new wave of companies started in the same manner and an explosion of content created by these writers for video sites on the web.

So is there money out there for a writer to tap into so they can write shows and craft deals of their own. Jim Breyer, a partner at Silicon Valley venture firm Accel Partners and a director at Facebook, told the LA Times that it's "likely" the firm will put some of its cash into some "screenwriter/content-oriented companies" next year.

Writers' Strike Accelerates Web Video's Move To TV

I think this is a interesting byproduct of the writer's strike and the ultimate dream of most producers of web content. The cross over to TV is a huge leap for all web video producers and highlights one of the major goals of this group. Fame has always trumpeted money and the crossover to a new medium is exactly what most want to accomplish.

NBC will start running the new Web show "Quarterlife," once passed up by rival ABC three years ago, on TV coming this January. The show was created by Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick of "thirtysomething" fame and hit the internet airwaves last week on MySpace.

The strike has forced networks to look elsewhere for content to replace their prime time shows and consider shows from the web that they once turned their nose up at. Will this last thought once the strike ends? With the quality of web shows getting better every year, its a natural progression for web video to move over to TV and something that I don't find that surprising. The web just provided producers a new and cheaper alternative to getting their content out there and thus we see a rise in the amount of content. So with or without the strike we were bound to see an increase in content in general and the natural progression and migration of tv to web and web to tv.