A few more half baked ones on new media being scooped up by the mainstream: Interesting pick up by the Sydney Morning Herald a few weeks ago on LonelyGirl15.  I don’t actively follow web dramas, but it seems like shows like quarterlife get picked up by NBC, it may be that LonelyGirl15 peaked a few months too early.  What happened to Bree (besides dying) and their creators after the massive media explosion?  (interesting factoid if you weren’t following — one of the producers of the show was *also* a resident like me … a surgical resident, as I recall)

Well it turns out that the principal actress has gone on to do other things, such as star in the NBC drama Greek, but the actual show carries on with his other non-dead co-stars.  How does the show finance itself?  A la Truman show — product placement.  And apparently most fans don’t mind.

Now, not being fully conversant with the goings rising and falling fortunes of YouTube stars, with the Hollywood Strike I do wonder if LonelyGirl15 will ever achieve the kind potential many were so excited about not too many months ago.  What with quarterlife getting picked up, I wonder if Bree might make a comeback from the dead.  Even if it doesn’t generate a lot of MSM coverage (as exposing LonelyGirl15 did last time), I’m sure that it could provide enough buzz to get the LG15 team back into talks with some mainstream networks.

And after all, its a pretty good staple for daytime dramas — so why not take a page out of *that* book to get a little exposure in this time of new media opportunity? :)

As I’ve mentioned in the past, the Hollywood Writer’s strike is creating an opportunity for other kinds of television shows, and new media in particular.  23/6, in particular is one of those kinds of entrepreneurial stabs, which is making a run for the Daily Show in terms of a parallel content (political satire from a liberal bent).

Quarterlife, on the other hand, is a web-based show from the minds behind “My So Called Life”, and in a demonstration of exactly how desperate Network television is to fill its lineup with *some* kind of content,  has actually picked up Quarterlife for broadcast earlier this year.

To put this in context, there is no question that the production values are *higher* and there is an unmistakable pedigree, but this is almost like NBC picking up the team behind Lonelygirl15 to produce a series on Lonelygirl15 — to be broadcast across the United States in as little as two months.

Now imagine how ridiculous this would have sounded six months ago — when Lonelygirl15 was outed, and she ended up everywhere as a result of the expose.  Sure, it might have ended up as a mid-season replacement on Friday nights (that’s when Geeks are watching television, right?  Hey, I remember the X-files and Star Trek both being on Friday nights — and that’s personal experience), but this?

This is craziness.

An incredible interesting.  You can be sure that if Quarterlife does even marginally “well”, that other networks will also be racing to scoop up entertainment that has cut its teeth on new / alternative media, as they will no doubt be cheap and, for the most part, not part of the union.

Even when the strike ends, its not hard to see that this is another watershed moment in television history; just like the prior strike heralded reality TV, as it needed television programming without writers that bred shows like COPs and America’s Home Videos — and indeed, the Fox television network — so will this strike likely herald a time when places like YouTube and MySpace are not just places to waste time.

They are, in a very real sense, a legitimate place where mainstream [Cable networks have brought on MySpace stars, such as Tila Nguyen -- I mean Tequila -- on MTV] network executives are going to be scouting for talent.  And not just actors and actresses — it goes all the way to complete shows.

Well, rampant speculation about all things Google seems to be on the rise these days, what with Google getting into cell phones and now another rumour that its getting into TV courtesy of the Guardian.  Turns out Simon Fuller is in talks with Google about revolutionizing life as we — *sorry, I mean, television as we know it.

Although the Guardian piece goes on for another few hundred words about what Mr. Fuller has done in the past (Spice Girls, American Idol, X-Factor — all populist reality dreck that has made hundreds of millions of dollars), there’s really no more substance to the rumour: Google + Guy-behind-American-Idol == Game-Changing-Event-For-Television-As-We-Know-It.

While I could speculate about what all this means, I think its real importance is its timing.

I’ve yakked about it before and I think its something that’s worth remembering: the Hollywood Writer’s strike, if it its prolonged, could have some interesting and dramatic (lame pun intended) effects on what comes up as new media alternatives — and more importantly, how legitimate these alternatives become as the strike carries on, and the stock pile of scripts dries up, and key demo’s look to other media for entertainment (and it looks like I’m not the only one).

Or rather, more so, really, as males 19-25 are already spending a great deal of time on the ‘net, playing console games, and otherwise not-watching mainstream entertainment.

There’s an interesting article in my local paper, the Toronto Star, about how some enterprising individuals have already striking while the iron’s hot.  quarterlife.com, for example, is a new web based television “series” behind the guys who wrote thirtysomething and my-so-called life.

There are a few other web based shows that its joining on MySpace, such “Clark and Michael, Pale Force, Coastal Dreams, Mr. Robinson’s Driving School and Roommates.”

The writer makes the point that the quality of these shows (even quarterlife, in spite of its impressive writing pedigree), is questionable.

I think that the quality, is actually immaterial.  Just like it doesn’t really matter how “good” American Idol or the Spice Girls are.

What many of these ventures are trying to do is create something that’s watchable and good *enough*.  And all it will take is just *one* of them to get big — Lonelygirl15 big — for it to puncture the public’s consciousness and run away with the whole thing.  And once *that* happens, *because* of the strike, it will really legitimize _serialized_ for-web-entertainment as something that “ordinary” people do.

During the last Hollywood strike, which lasted something like 20 weeks (incidentally, around 20 years ago), new methods of programming evolved to deal with the fact that … well, there weren’t any writers.  More reality based programming, for example, like COPS and America’s Most Wanted, as well as America’s Home Videos debuted, which have stuck around in some form or another since that time.

One wonders what will come out of *this* strike if it gets prolonged.  In a delicious bit of irony, for example, one wonders now that the media landscape has fractured into both online and off line means, whether or not there will be other online alternatives that will necessarily evolve to meet the demand for entertainment.

Specifically “late night” entertainment as the late night talk shows have been the first casualties of this strike.

The Wall Street Journal reports that this may in fact be happening.  23/7 — found at 237.com — is a site which satirizes and parodies the news stories of the day with a decided political slant, which coincidentally was recently launched in the wake of the writers strike.  Something like the Daily Show, actually.

Mat Ingram reports that its difficult to be funny, which, I think is his own polite way of saying that its a bit _un_funny.  Irrespective of what your opinions of humour might be — and if 237.com is humourous — I think that sites like 237.com are probably going to start popping up with increasing regularity as the strike continues.

That is, if the strike continues, you can bet that there will be more and more online alternatives, even alternative in ways that aren’t even similar to television and movie projects that will be missing, that will be produced.

And I don’t think that this is *just* because enterprising and entrepreneurial individuals will recognize this “gap” and try and fill it (although its smart), but because like a gas, the demand for entertainment will change and fill any available containers that pop up to fill it.

On one hand, I’m quite for the Hollywood Strike as it makes a lot of sense to want to compensate people who are the creative forces behind much of the entertainment I enjoy.

On the other hand, its an exciting time as a new media watcher because as the Hollywood Strike *lengthens*, so too will the growth of alternative and online entertainment to match the unmet need.

And I don’t think that the irony should be lost on anyone that the reason why the strike is on in the first place is to compensate for new media distribution — which is now growing *because* of the strike.

If the writers in the Hollywood strike want 2.5% of gross profits from media that is distributed digitally, I don’t see what’s got up in Michael Eisner’s “cry to Apple, peasants!” craw.  After all, he complains that new media is broke and They aren’t making any money from their new ventures.

Well, if that’s the case (and there’s evidence that’s not quite true), then unless there are other details that haven’t been breached it shouldn’t really matter.  After all, if gross profits are negative or zero, then I don’t see how giving The Writers 2.5% of nothing is really going to put a dent into things.

All it does is make Eisner and his crew look more dick-ish than they already seem to be.

It seems like over the past few days, the entire technosphere has gotten them worked up into a righteous frothy debate over the OpenSocial API, wringing their hands with what it will mean to Facebook, Google, and all parts in between — ignoring, perhaps, one of the larger, and certainly much more meaningful to the average Facebook-ian (and indeed, average non-techie person), tech stories that is directly related to new media.

Yes, I am referring to the impending strike by The Writers Guild of America, the Screen Actors Guild and the Directors Guild of America that will likely happen in a short 48 hours.

What? Who cares?

Well, anyone who watches late night television for one (anyone?), including techie favourites The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, but also late night perennials such as David Letterman and Jay Leno.

These shows are going to go into re-runs with the strike, as they require fresh material daily, and require the heavy lifting to be done by said writers who are part of said union.

So wait — what does this have to do with Facebook?

Nothing.

But what it *does* have to do with things is how people who write for hollywood get paid for their work as it gets distributed through different distribution — “new media” — networks, including and not limited to things like iTunes, but also other nascent ventures, such as, for example Hulu; also, that practically obsolescent form of digital media, the DVD.

While I also scoffed at the notion at first — running a snide “zero divided by anything is still zero, chumps” through my mind — I did do a little bit of researching and through an article at the International Herald Tribune, there are a few facts that are worth considering, in particular ” Consumers are expected to spend $16.4 billion (€11.3 billion) on DVDs this year, according to Adams Media Research … By contrast, studios could generate about $158 million (€109 million) from selling movies online and about $194 million (€134 million) from selling TV shows over the Web.”

Now, I don’t think that anyone *really* knows the nuts and bolts of how “new media” distribution dollars are going to work out; and I think any new media watcher has seen exactly how long its taken for the larger media companies to get their online acts together (comically so, I might add).

But the various writers unions have a point: the online pie, as fetal, experimental, and primordial as it is now, is *not* worth zero dollars, and in fact, will likely grow to rival physical digital mediums at some point in the future.

And I’ll take their side on this one — its a fight worth fighting for now, because as slow as many things have gone in the recent past, no one really knows how fast things will change in the future. And if they sit on their hands until the next set of negotiations — which will likely be years from now — its possible that the online market will have exploded, while these writers are still paid according to 20th century standards.

While we’re all still enthralled by the latest Facebook / Google standoff, there’s one new media story right under our noses that will affect many non-techies — and will surely be noticed by the media — in the upcoming days. I wonder how many tech bloggers will actually take notice then.