People will start turning to online content if the writers’ strike continues, a reader writes.
STRUCK DUMB: THE VIEWERS STRIKE BACK: Responding to my query about whether readers were really affected by the Hollywood writers’ strike, Dave Taddeo wrote in with the sort of bleak prediction that should be the cause of wet seats in corner offices in New York and Los Angeles, if both producers and WGA officials weren’t too busy fighting each other for the position of king of 2000, which is just about when it should have become obvious that big changes were overwhelming an industry whose basic business model persisted in pretending that it was still 1952.
“I think the writers’ strike is a no win situation for both the studios and the writers,” Dave wrote. “I think as viewers start realizing all their shows are in reruns and there’s nothing new to watch they’ll start looking for alternative media sources.”
“Online video production has become very good over the last couple of years.As people turn away from the tube and towards the computer they will stop associating online video with the crap you get on Youtube and start watching some of the great, if not incredible, content available online.From 5 minute tech shows to 30 minute special interest shows to 20 minute drama episodes, this content doesn’t have to follow a specific time line or format. People will start watching 5 or 10 minute videos that entertain or inform them when they want and how they want (at their computers or on their video iPods on the way to work).There’s no need to be in the living room every week at the same time being barraged by ads that don’t pertain to you.”
Dave goes on to plug sites likegetmiro.com andrevision3.com, and while it’s no surprise that they’re tech-oriented site – techies have been leading this parade for over a decade now, from early online communities like The Well to clunky pre-iPod portable media players to file-sharing. The bottom line is that the basic models for non-broadcast, on-demand content distribution are being tried in any and every possible form and variation right now, ready to proliferate with a bit of economic attention once the majority of viewers are ones that don’t regard radio – a technological relationship that matured in the 1930s, to which broadcast television really only added pictures – as the delivery method that best serves their needs.
The short-term damage the writers’ strike will likely cause – millions, perhaps billions, in lost ad dollars and wages, dozens of new shows canceled before they’ve developed an audience, older ones on the downside of their popularity canned to balance budgets – is well-documented, and while the potential boost it’ll probably give reality TV production is old news, the effects could echo for years if the strike goes on long enough to nudge a shift in viewers’ habits. The term, I believe, is “creative destruction,” and for some of us, it’s the kind of bull this particular china shop has needed for too long.
