I think this will be the linen song for me from now on.

What cards are those?

Money. 6 companies effectively control US media. If an indy company appears and produces some kind of ground breaking online series, what will happen? The studios will purchase either the product, or the company which made it. The only real exceptions to that are technology companies which may or may not get involved which are financially strong - Google and Apple being the two prime examples. I don't think Apple would touch it with a barge pole because they're in bed with the studios for iTunes sake, and iTunes is a primary business unit of theirs. Google, on the other hand, are getting involved it appears.

I definitely think new media will change the face of entertainment media and distribution. I'm a company director of a new media company which deals with just that. I don't think the studios have all the power. The creative types, in fact, hold that. I think the studios definitely have the control of the current system, and I can absolutely fucking guarantee this: if any business starts to encroach on their area, they will gobble it up or shut it down. Very highly paid peoples jobs depend on it. They're gonna shit on everybody from up high who they think holds any kind of power to change anything.

This is why I believe NBC Universal and the like are currently fighting with Apple over iTunes. Those studios don't want Apple having any power. So they're taking control of their content, and setting up their own distribution systems (Hulu.com, for example). It's an attempt to shut Apple out of the market. Other example - Viacom suing Youtube for $1 billion, pretty much immediately after Google bought Youtube. What's happening with Quarterlife, the much buzzed about web series? NBC picked it up. Powerful sites and creative people involved. Controlled.

Ron Moore and BSG fans at Fan Day on the picket lines.

ETA: With bonus Harlan Ellison and a bluegrass band.

ETA: With bonus Harlan Ellison and a bluegrass band.

And the Tick! Harlan's being a little disingenuous. He doesn't have a mansion with a pool, but he does have gargoyles on his eaves and secret passages in his built-to-his-specs house.

He doesn't have a mansion with a pool

Yeah, I can't really imagine him hanging out poolside anyways.

No, no, he'd be waiting down in the pool low enough that unsuspecting swimmers wouldn't see his dorsal fin.

Oh dear gods. I just watched the video and am still giggling. I have to say, though, that those two are BRAVE for allowing the Pacific to wash under them. Yipes.

If an indy company appears and produces some kind of ground breaking online series, what will happen?

see: Mr. Deity. I feel like it was over a year ago when they posted that they had made a deal with a big production company and more info and episodes would appear Any Day Now!

Strike News: Shhhh! Show Runners Returning:

Neal Baer, the show runner for “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” tells the newspaper: “We agreed at a meeting a couple of weeks ago that if the C.E.O.’s went back to the table then we would go back in our producer capacity.”

Mr. Baer “said many of the show runners he knows have already returned — albeit quietly,” Mr. Cieply and Mr. Barnes report.

So I decided to spend the holiday weekend catching up on movies. I'm up to Zodiac, which might possibly be the slowest moving film in the history of motion pictures. It feels twice as long as Summer of Sam and that was a Spike Lee movie.

Between this and The Black Dahlia, I'm starting to feel betrayed by the entire "loosely based on a true infamous case" genre.