Monday, December 17, 2007

excellent news from los angeles: striking writers striking out to start startups

The LA Times reports:

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.
About damn time, writers. You've always had the talent, now the barriers have fallen quite a bit between getting those great ideas out of your head and in front of people.

There's an entire generation passing around great video clips from sites like YouTube. We don't care who's made it, as long as it's entertaining. One of the best Will Ferrell clips I've seen all year was on FunnyOrDie.com -- the Criterion Edition is worth a look, too.

Obviously, there will be successes and failures, but we'll all be better off in the end.

Your brothers and sisters in journalism are working their way toward this as well, thanks to feasible online revenue *gasp* models and maybe even a few brand-agnostic news aggregators. It's about time content was king, and the creators of it started getting treated that way. Or at least close to it; that whole Divine Right thing is bullshit.