Source : Globe & Mail

Could the Hollywood writers strike be the best thing that ever happened to online media? Some believe that if it goes on long enough, the strike could provide a boost for alternative forms of entertainment and accelerate the move by younger viewers away from broadcasting.

With no traditional outlet for their talents, the theory goes, some writers might be more willing to take a chance on a Web-based show or a site such as FunnyOrDie.com - a comedy portal launched by comedian Will Ferrell - or My Damn Channel, a similar Web-only site founded by former MTV executive Rob Barnett.

Another online-only venture that some feel could get a boost is Quarterlife, the Web offering from Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, the team behind Thirtysomething and My So-Called Life. Their new online drama about twentysomethings starts next week.

Some believe that TV viewers, deprived of their favourite shows such as Heroes or Prison Break, might turn to these and other Internet sites for their entertainment fix rather than watch reruns.

"There is an opportunity, if there is a protracted strike, to create channels of development on the Internet that are outside the big companies," Herskovitz told The Hollywood Reporter.

Jeff Zucker, NBC Universal's chief executive officer, warned recently that a strike could be a "watershed event" that "drives more people away from prime time."

At the moment, industry reports say it's not clear whether the Writers Guild of America would allow members to work for online projects during the strike. Some expect that smaller, independent websites or projects might get a pass, but that larger corporate sites might not.

If the strike did help to cause an online boom, history would be repeating itself. The last Writers Guild strike, almost 20 years ago, indirectly helped jump-start the "reality TV" phenomenon, since shows such as Cops and America's Funniest Home Videos didn't have to be written.

The 1988 strike also helped to push many traditional TV viewers toward cable, giving the fledgling industry a boost that helped it grow into the multibillion-dollar enterprise it is today.

Ironically, any jump into the world of online content could pose a challenge for writers for the exact same reason they are currently at war with the networks and studios: No one is sure how to make online media pay, or what the future value of such sites and their content might be.

The major sticking point in the current contract negotiations is what constitutes an appropriate level of compensation for new-media ventures such as iTunes downloads, cellphone "mobisodes" and streaming TV content. How much should writers be paid if their content is designed for the Web only, rather than for traditional TV broadcast?

Another elephant in the room is the lingering resentment over the royalty deal that the Writers Guild agreed to in 1985 with respect to distribution on what was then a new medium: DVDs. Since there was little or no consensus on the future value of a DVD, the union agreed to take a much smaller portion of the revenue than some wanted.

As a result, the guild has watched billions of dollars flow to the movie and TV industry with little benefit to its members. DVD sales and rentals last year generated more than $24-billion (U.S.) in revenue.

Some writers are afraid that the union might do the same thing with newer forms of online media and wind up watching yet another billion-dollar gravy train leave the station without them. (The strike earlier this year by the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists was also partly based on demands for a greater portion of online and new media revenues.)

But the TV networks and movie studios argue that the nature of online media is much harder to grasp than a simple DVD copy of a movie or TV show. In some cases, writers are saying they should be compensated for each stream of a TV show or for each download of a show from iTunes.

The networks and studios say those kinds of deals would make such content uneconomic to produce and would almost certainly lead to them doing fewer such new-media projects in the future.

Meanwhile, some writers are clearly hoping that the strike will give them more control over their own content and where it appears, and possibly a bigger stake in the returns from that content - in the same way that putting a new album online gave the British band Radiohead more control over its music (and likely more revenue).

That's a possibility the major studios and TV networks probably don't want to dwell on too much, especially when you consider that contracts with both the Screen Actors Guild and the Directors Guild are also set to expire next year.

If the industry isn't careful, it could have a full-scale online revolt on its hands.

© Globe and Mail