It's interesting to see that, according to USA Today, the networks are struggling to fill out their fall programming. Also, interesting to note that Newsweek reports that many ideas for shows are coming from overseas. (But Israel as number one source? Who knew?)
The programming crisis is being blamed to an extent on the writers' strike (and now the threat of an actors' strike is looming). But that strike also led to writers putting their work on the Web. And that led to the creation of StrikeTV, "an ad-supported web-video venture that allows creators to retain ownership of their series."
The possibilities for an aspiring screenwriter with an entrepreneurial spirit, a cheap video camera and some basic editing equipment (or an alliance with someone who works in video) are pretty amazing. Strike.TV has attracted a stable of established self-financed writers that include Tom Holland, who created the "Chucky" series of horror films, Chuck Sheets, a director of "The Simpsons," and Ken LaZebnik, the supervising producer of 'Star Trek: Enterprise' and a writer of Robert Altman's 2006 film, 'A Prairie Home Companion.'
Strike.TV has also formed a strategic partnership with an ad agency called Mother, whose clients include Target and Dell. And, unlike the Writers Guild of America, which has loudly criticized the use of product placement in shows and asked the Federal Communications Commission to regulate the practice, Strike.TV's founder says he will actively court brands "for integrations of specific, major products to be inserted into story lines." Screenwriters support this (though viewers may weary of it) because it adds up to a bigger budget for their productions--and for them.
Now along with this, consider what's happening on the ebook front. The great potential for writers to use the Web to promote and sell books they've self-published (taking care, of course, to pick the right publisher--a topic for another time). The proliferation of online magazines that publish fiction and non-fiction. And, of course, the fact that online writing is now being turned into printed books (the recent example being the blog "Stuff White People Like," which came out in old-fashioned book form last week).
Is there any doubt that the Web is creating a revolution in the writing field?
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