Actually, this is a golden opportunity for the some of the internet companies to break the media companies hold on entertainment content. Why pay someone else for the content when you can control the whole thing?

Cost, and risk of failure, are high on the list of things I'd be concerned about. The average US TV show which fails in it's first year costs the network around about $20m, give or take. If you're an internet company, you'd have to drastically reduce the budget to suit your audience figures (you're not going to get 6 million viewers first week). And if your budget is crappy, you look like a BBC show.

The US entertainment industry is so incredibly controlled, any company looking to take it on would need massive resources, and to be independent of those companies.

That said, Google....

Yeah, and Apple has this whole distribution channel in place, and about $4 Billion in cash in the bank.

Don't knock the BBC. I think people are willing to forgive a lot, as long as they believe in the characters and the story (creations of the writers and the actors). As long as the background tech is not so bad to be jarring and pushes you out of the story (no cardboard backgrounds, unless you make the cardboard backgrounds a believable part of the story)

I'm not knocking the BBC, CaBil, I'm just saying the production values are radically different to US TV, and US TV viewers are preconditioned to expect a lot. Also, the pay? Fucking awful in comparison.

Tom, good point. I'm just not sure companies see it as a potential source of income - yet. There's certainly a few companies trying it (eg that pilot produced with Amanda Tapping). I hope it works out for them.

Why We Strike

And if your budget is crappy, you look like a BBC show.

Bwah.

Honestly though, if you're a video podcaster, you don't need 6 million viewers to make money because your production costs aren't going to be even close to an episode of, say, Lost, or even Survivor. You're not going to be building expensive sets, you're not going to be shooting on film, etc etc. You're going to shoot on DV in your living room and do your editing and sound mix on your laptop. If you want your show to look good on a TV screen for the Apple TV or Tivo owners, the prices on HDV cameras are dropping like rocks lately. Final Cut Express is $99 if you get it preinstalled on a new Mac. Look at a show like Ask A Ninja or Cranky Geeks -- clearly, content matters more than production values (especially if most of your audience will be watching on a 3-inch iPod screen).

In the last writers' strike, television lost viewers to Blockbuster becauset when there was no new content on TV, people rented movies instead. This time around, television will lose viewers to YouTube and Tivocasts. If you're an independent online video producer, this is absolutely the time to start courting sponsors.

That said, I do hope the strike ends soon and everyone gets to go back to work.

The best example I can think of an online TV series, at the moment, is quarterlife: [link]

Also, [link] - Sanctuary's production values (in places) are actually some of the best I've seen in recent years. Somebody is taking a huge risk on that one - good luck to them.

Also, the pay? Fucking awful in comparison.

So. Very. True.

But re the BBC's production values - there's already a TON of BBC content on US TV screens that American audiences are happily watching without realizing. Almost everything on the Discovery family of channels is bought-in and reversioned (American narrators and edited for ads) BBC progamming, ditto the History Channel and a fair chunk of PBS. (Of course, the docs do tend to be produced at a higher level than the fiction for the very reason that they DO sell well over here, and Discovery as a co-producer means more money at the start. But Rome was a huge success, as was Hustle, and of course Dr Who on both BBCA and SciFi.)

I think, in terms of production values, that Britishy tell tends to look and be quite stagey; that at least until pretty recently, UK telly was largely influenced by the theatrical tradition, rather than the cinematic tradition. Whereas in the US, it's been more influenced by cinematic conventions.

'Course, I may be talking shite. But that seems to me a plausible explanation for the difference between Casualty and ER. (Because I don't think it's just about how much money is being thrown at shows in terms of lighting/sound/sets etc. Although maybe it's just that...)

Still, UK telly is getting shinier these days.

Well, I hadn't realized when I talked earlier, but it turns out a lot of writer-producers have clauses in their contracts stating they can't work on the internet except as part of the contracting employer's own efforts.

For instance, if a writer-producer was contracted with ABC, they can't work for anything but ABC web efforts. And since Disney/ABCis a struck company, they can't work for anyone then.

Now, they are talking about the studios using force majeur clauses that kick in after six weeks (in general, it will vary by specific contract) that void the contracts to get rid of some folks that they have been wanting to get rid of anyways. But they don't have to, and in some cases they may want to keep writer-producers under contract for no other reason to keep them from doing anything else. But on the bright side, that means they keep on getting paid (for the producer half of their job, at least)

So we may not see all of our favorite writers do anything other than catch up on their comic work in this time...

That is my limited understanding of the situation, of course. People with first hand knowledge, please feel free to correct me...