The studios have power because they have:

• The ability to secure financing for production. (If you walked into a bank and asked for a loan to make a film, they would laugh and laugh and laugh).
• The ability to market and distribute the product.

#2 is becoming more and more irrelevant thanks to the Internet. #1 is more tricky. If someone is going to take the risk of financing you're venture, they're obviously going to want some measure of control.

Well, yes, multinational conglomerates will likely still be here for a long time to come, but everything goes away eventually. Even multinational conglomerates. Even if we can't imagine such a thing right now. Many fortunes have been made throughout history by imagining the unimaginable, and if there ever were a time to try even just crazy schemes to make a quick buck, now is as good a time as any.

There's an article in today's LA Times specifically about #1. It's what got me thinking about this. Today, anyway. The subject has been brewing in my mind for at least a week now.

In our shiny new digital world #1 can involve a lot less money.

Once upon a time, in a pre media age, music and theater and most entertainment were a largely local phenomenon -- each town had its very best fiddler, etc. You had the occasional show that came to town as well, but they only had so much market penetration due to the constraints of, you know, horsies.

I'm intreigued by the thought of that sort of less-global entertainment returning to prominence. In some ways it has.

Marc Anderssen has written about applying the "Silicon Valley" model -- where venture capital pays for production -- to Hollywood: [link]

And John Rogers agrees that it'll happen, but thinks that Anderssen's being a little optimistic about how quickly it'll happen:

We already have indie movies, but not everyone out in viewer-land is going to be happy with talky-talk and horror flicks. They'd occasionally like some car crashes and exotic locations, please, not to mention actors they recognize. You're also in direct competition with the system you're trying to kill, who knows you're trying to kill it and also happens to control almost all mainstream distribution. Good luck. TV's no easier -- you can't partially finance a TV entertainment start-up. If you want to make TV shows, you need to finance an entire season. The pilot process is a monstrous waste of time and money, stunningly inefficient (an you say "amortize" kids? Knew ya could) and will make no sense in the Internet download model. Six to eight episodes at a time, costing about .5 to 1 million a pop, will be the base level of investment. That's with the sharpest producer on the planet, and a lot of people taking a flyer on their usual fees. Not even talking promotion, although that will change ... eventually. Not a ton of money in the grand scheme of things, but it's real money. Beyond the ken of all but the richest individuals, particularly when you build in the assumption that the first batch of these things, used as the sharp wedge on changing the business model and viewer/download habits, are almost guaranteed to fail pretty miserably.

Some hedge funds are starting to pay for films. It's exactly the type of high-risk/high-reward investment that they look for.

I think the point is twofold: one that it can take a long time for what you predict to happen. And secondly it can take even longer for studios to be spent as a major force. Remember that UA competed with the big studios. It did not replace them. So I doubt needing fair pay for what you do for the big boys is going to become obsolete soon. Maybe never.

Well, yes, multinational conglomerates will likely still be here for a long time to come, but everything goes away eventually. Even multinational conglomerates.

See, I think they, like the roaches, will survive anything, even nuclear war. They may not have the same names as they do now but there will always be multinational conglomerates. Maybe after armageddon, it will be down to just one. Like, The Cher Company.

SOMEBODY always controlls a bunch of the money and commerce. Once upon a time it was royalty, now its multinational conglomerates. As long as entertainment is profitable whomever is next will want a piece of it.

Strega, I was going to link that. Great minds and all.

I think that Rogers has a real good (and level-headed) view on what is and what isn't possible. He also seems to be less delusional about when things like this could happen and who might be the driving force. I like that he points out that not all writers want to be the kind of multi-hyphenate that could drive an ambitious project like this. Some folk just want to write and not become a one person studio.