All Things Digital

While the writers’ strike in Hollywood was going on, BoomTown has been offering up suggestions about stuff to watch.

Of all the many videos out there, the most promising to me have been the many, many spoof videos the writers have done about the strike that just ended.

Along with terrific videos of the strike itself from the front lines at places like United Hollywood, there were tons of really well-produced online videos by writers, who are now back to plotting sitcoms and dramas for television and writing film blockbusters.

Too bad, as they have done some amazing work in the online space and one hopes it will continue.

Here is a very funny one called “How the Writers Strike Ended: Script Cops”:

What does it take to imagine a new industry out of orange groves?

A lot more than settling a strike, I would posit.

A lot has been written about the writers’ strike in Hollywood, which is officially over after three acrimonious months with the overwhelming vote by the members of the Writers Guild of America to accept a contract it hammered out with the entertainment studios.

Writers will presumably be back at their keyboards today.

The toll? Hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenues and no new episodes of “Heroes” (what will evil Sylar do now that his powers have returned?), all over how writers should be paid for content that appears online.

That there is precious little money being made online by anyone does not seem to have mattered, as the struggle metastasized into a symbolic battle over all the wrenching changes that digital technologies have made on the industry and are sure to make even more significantly in the future.

Writers, most of all, understand a dramatic narrative, and this one tells the tale of their work being digitized and downloaded without a lot of reward or control. It is a familiar story to them, of course, as technology after technology has not been kind to them.

In this three-year deal, victory was declared when the writers did get a percentage of the revenue from fees paid to stream their work on the Web.

Sorry to be a downer, but those fees will always and forever be peanuts, even if getting a percentage (rather than a residual) is seen as a win.

That’s because the big bucks in online content must come from advertising, which the writers will not grab a piece of at this point, if ever.

And if you think the creation of original online content is in its nascency, and it is, the robust business models around how to pay for it are even more stillborn.

Of course, there is money here and money there–some from items purchased, some from sponsorships, some from basic CPM economics.

But it is all very tentative and small now and advertisers are still not springing open their wallets with the kind of money they are used to spending on television.

And why should they? It is safe to advertise there, despite dwindling audience, wherein quality online content has so far shown itself to be very uncertain.

While there is an occasional errant hit of the most basic kind (Funny or Die’s “The Landlord” or similar material), there is no systemic or large-scale efforts to establish this industry of original online content in a way that is different from what has come before.

Of course, writers did hightail it up north to Silicon Valley during the strike to try to get some money to create new kinds of online-entertainment production companies.

But it felt like it was out of desperation, rather than a real commitment to change the system they were working in and to pioneer new forms of entertainment based around the Web medium.

The last time writers tried to marry venture capitalists, by the way, was in the last bubble and that was out of pure greed at the sight of the dot-commers all getting rich.

Well, greed did not work then and fear will not now. I would imagine writers will now abandon those efforts now that their old paychecks are back.

That’s too bad, because what’s needed is a whole new class of talent that has very little stake in the old one and who are seeking new ways of creating content, doing business and, most of all, envisioning the future.

Perhaps that is unspecific and not as real as the deal that was hammered out at the Luxe Hotel in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles between union reps and Disney’s Bob Iger and News Corp.’s Peter Chernin.

Now I have stayed at that hotel, in fact, for a conference, held nearby at the Getty Museum on a high hill overlooking Los Angeles. Called the Entertainment Gathering, it touched on the changing nature of the entertainment industry and also on the collision with the digital world it was facing.

Of course, there was a lot of talk about the innovation boom in Silicon Valley and what it meant for the entertainment industry.

At a break, one old entertainment mogul attending wanted to point out to me that Hollywood was like that once. He regaled me with stories of the mostly immigrant entrepreneurs who had left the certainty of the East Coast and had come to California and created a whole new business in the orange groves that once dominated the Los Angeles region.

“Can you imagine that?” he asked me, sweeping his hand over the vista.

Indeed, I could.

Until the writers’ strike in Hollywood is over–who knew it would go on this long?–BoomTown has decided to offer suggestions about cool new stuff to watch.

Today, I urge one and all to head over to the videos being done by celebrity, actor, talk-show host and larger-than-life personality Rosie O’Donnell.

Unlike a lot of celebs, who flee the online cameras of sites like TMZ.com, O’Donnell has been putting herself out there for a while in her unusually forthright–and sometimes downright odd–blog.

She uses, at various times, text, pictures, collages and video, which yield an always entertaining assortment of offerings.

This is exactly the way new media is created–it’s not television, or print or radio even (O’Donnell uses a lot of music in her posts), but an entirely new form of compelling content that is made for the Web.

To my mind, she has taken to the medium in a way few others have, trying all sorts of things, especially in her varied video offerings.

That can mean simply filming her family as they do art projects on a rainy day, to answering viewer questions using her iSight camera and little else, to making funny little gems like this one, in which she makes light of being dubbed the most “annoying” celebrity by some poll.

Here’s that video:

When last we checked in with NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker, he was merrily trashing Steve Jobs and Apple.

What a difference a three-month-long writers’ strike in Hollywood makes.

Yesterday, in an interview in the Financial Times, Zucker said: “We’ve said all along that we admire Apple, that we want to be in business with Apple,” he said. “We’re great fans of Steve Jobs.”

Hmmmmm.

It was only at the end of last October when Zucker (pictured here) was slapping the digital media business, and especially Apple, in an interview with New Yorker writer Ken Auletta at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School.

In it, Zucker blamed Apple for ruining the music business.

To be fair, Zucker did add “in terms of pricing” to the idea that Apple was the villain, noting that NBCU only had $15 million in revenue for its video fare on iTunes in its last year (a service it had just pulled off of to do its own thing).

He wanted NBCU to have the ability to raise prices on some shows it was selling to get better returns, even though Apple’s Steve Jobs has stuck to his guns on keeping pricing lower.

The entertainment industry, long used to controlling all the action, has long hated this, of course, since Apple’s iPod device has essentially been the only one widely embraced by consumers.

“We don’t want to replace the dollars we were making in the analog world with pennies on the digital side,” said Zucker, in what is admittedly a very good metaphor for the fast-changing situation for old media caught in the new media tsunami.

But then he stepped right into it by suggesting Apple should pay back media companies like his. “Apple sold millions of dollars worth of hardware off the back of our content and made a lot of money,” he said.

At the time, I noted: “That’s sort of like Britney Spears asking the tabloids to hand over a big bag of Benjamins for making such bank covering her riveting high jinks and crotch emergencies. Frankly, she has a better argument than Zucker.”

Nonetheless, NBC has been fast-forward on its efforts with its Hulu video sharing site, a joint venture with News Corp. (owner of this site).

And, quite correctly, in the FT piece, Zucker noted that the strike has spurred him to begin cutting back on some old television traditions, like the pilot season and the once-glamorous upfront presentations to impress advertisers.

“Things like that are all vestiges of an era that’s gone by and won’t return,” said Zucker. “I think there were a tremendous number of inefficiencies in Hollywood and it often takes a seismic event to change them, and I think that’s what’s happened here.”

Seismic, indeed.

Until the writers’ strike in Hollywood is over–who knew it would go on this long?–BoomTown has decided to offer periodic suggestions about cool new stuff to watch, focused on a more geeky audience.

We’ll start with TV–no, not the tiresome (sorry!) “American Idol,” but a new series on the same Fox network, which is “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.”

OK, it has some techish qualities–killer cyborgs, cool gadgetry, time travel–but the fact of the matter is the “Terminator” movie series is my secret favorite, except for the genius of “Planet of the Apes” and “Soylent Green.”

OK, I might have apocalyptic tastes. In any case, as a fan of the “Terminator” movies, I was expecting the worst.

But a nicely menacing tone and a great cast, headed by tough-chick mom Lena Headey (of course, I had to use this picture of the actress here), was a happy surprise.

It takes place right after the end of the second “Terminator” movie and includes another tough-teen girl “good” cyborg, who protects the boy who will be the leader of a rebellion in the future.

Best of all, you can completely ignore the television and watch it online, either by buying it on iTunes or streaming it on Fox.

Here’s a trailer:

Why does the idea of a marriage between Hollywood writers and VCs make me slightly queasy?

But that’s just the feeling I got when I read the always sharp Joseph Menn of the Los Angeles Times, who penned an interesting piece earlier this week about writers in Hollywood turning to venture capitalists as the strike drags on.

Wrote Menn: “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.”

That includes meetings with Silicon Valley VCs like Jim Breyer of Accel Partners, whose investment in Facebook gives it insight into the creation of new audiences.

The hope for the–let’s just say it, shall we–unnatural pairing of tech VCs and Hollywood folks?

Read more »

While the collapse of the talks between writers and Hollywood studios to end the strike might seem more like a tragedy–a shoot-your-idiot-selves-in-the-foot tragedy, of course–you have to love all the very funny writers’ strike parodies being put on the Web.

In fact, it feels like the first good stuff to come out of Hollywood made specifically for the Web, rather than a rehashing of hash and repurposed hackery. Nothing like a crisis to focus on what is really important!

While it is a tad violent, although more in a Tom-and-Jerry way, here’s a video from Alec McNayr, a producer with Space Shank Media, about how the talks are really going:

With the entertainment industry reeling from weakness brought on by changing viewers’ watching habits due to the Internet, the news of the talks to end the writers’ strike collapsing on Friday can’t be a good thing for Hollywood.

With the strike now in its sixth week, the studio reps–the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers–and the Writers Guild of America took aim at each other at a Los Angeles hotel, accusing the other side of negotiating in bad faith and being uncooperative.

The two sides still appear far apart on a lot of issues, including unionization of reality shows, but a lot of the issues center on how to split up revenues from new media.

Of course, most of those revenues from the Internet–via downloading and streaming, for example–are still tiny, so the two sides are essentially arguing over nothing, except that that nothing might be something someday.

Got it? (Kind of like Facebook being worth $15 billion!)

In honor of News Corp. officially getting ownership of Dow Jones this week, here’s a recent take from Headzup on the strike from the perspective of AllThingD.com’s new boss (Welcome, Rupe!):

Since they’re fighting with the studios over being paid for content that is moving to the Internet, why shouldn’t the Writers Guild of America put up some choice user-generated content on the Web?

United Hollywood is a nifty Web site chronicling the strike in a blog and video, and it also has a page on YouTube.

After all, why shouldn’t people whose work is often ripped off on the site use it for their own benefit too?

Here’s a video of the writers of “The Office,” who are as goofy as you might expect, but who make cogent arguments about why they should share in the Internet wealth:

And how much do we love the chant, “How greedy can you get, they won’t even share the Net,” with “Grey’s Anatomy” cast member Sandra Oh carrying a picket sign? As much as we like donuts, that’s how much!

What, oh what, can we say about the latest inane quote from yet another Hollywood mogul about Apple’s Steve Jobs and his hugely popular iTunes and iPod products.

The latest piece of hoo-ha comes from former Disney CEO Michael Eisner (pictured below), pointing a finger at Apple as the real villain in the ongoing strike between the Writers Guild of America and Hollywood entertainment behemoths

At fault? Steve Jobs, of course!

Read more »

So when, if ever, will there be a truly bona fide Internet hit?

And please, pretty please, it just can’t be “lonelygirl15″ (pictured below) and some clever music videos.

The lack of lasting and profitable professional content online is once again in sharp relief with the writers’ strike now taking place in Hollywood.

In a Wall Street Journal piece yesterday on the struggle between the Writers Guild of America and entertainment studios, Ken Hertz, a Los Angeles lawyer who has worked on digital music issues, made an interesting observation:

If anything, the strike could create an opportunity for the online world to step up and prove its value to the guild. A strike could in a strange way damage the studios by creating online competitors who come forward to offer the union writers a new model that no one would have otherwise had the time or effort to conceive of.”

If only.

Because, while the main point of contention between the two sides is how to split future revenues from digital distribution, I am not sure exactly when it will become more than the middling revenue (and not much income) online content generates today, which is more like splitting up a tip jar at Starbucks than raking in big bags of dough from some Hollywood blockbuster.

Read more »

The talks between Hollywood studios and the Writers Guild of America ground to a halt as of last night and a strike could happen anytime, since the contract between them expired at midnight.

The big problem? Digital issues, which are sure to be an increasingly vexing issue for the entertainment industry, as more and more content moves or is even born online.

At issue are low-ball DVD residuals that writers also fear will be replicated in the digital arena, such as Internet downloads. They also want a piece of the online video ad market, which is still in its formative stages.

In a statement, the Writers Guild noted: “Every issue that matters to writers, including Internet reuse, original writing for new media, DVDs and jurisdiction, has been ignored.”

Studios, repped by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, argue that the nascent digital entertainment industry, which so far is paltry in comparison to other distribution methods, needs time to breath before being pummeled by higher costs.

What NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker said the other day, referring in this case to its not-so-lucrative deal with Apple’s iTunes (only $15 million in video revenue in a year), is perhaps apt: “We don’t want to replace the dollars we were making in the analog world with pennies on the digital side.”

Except that might actually be the case for a while until Hollywood figures out a low-cost, high-standard way of producing for the digital medium. Instead, the industry is beset by piracy (which, sad to say, works well) and ever-higher production costs it seems unable to control.

In the new paradigm, one might assume that the creators of content–i.e., the writers–would have more power, as the proliferation of distribution platforms of all kinds continues.

No longer under the stranglehold of clueless and most definitely overpaid studio hacks, oops, executives, one might imagine a future where the creator and the distributor are one and the same.

Well, not yet, as creators still remain largely overpaid minions to the Hollywood machine, held in place by a system that seems sure to fall apart just as soon as a Google of the entertainment industry is created.

That is, a method for paying these creators and also for the production of content that rivals the current and obviously broken way it is now done.

Many years ago, writer Herman Mankiewicz wrote to Ben Hecht about Hollywood: “Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots. Don’t let this get around.”

That moment can’t come too soon for digital Hollywood.