It’s entirely possible that I’m not the best ‘loper to speak on this topic, but, well, that’s never stopped me. It’s not like my thoughts will stop the best ‘loper from speaking. We’re opinionated that way. And when a major corporation like CBS does something stupid, it requires team coverage.

For a few months there, we here at Medialoper HQ were thinking that maybe — just maybe — CBS might actually get how this whole Internet thing works. That maybe — just maybe — they might understand the importance of brand and discovery.

Luckily, we are not as gullible as the mainstream media, though, frankly, we gnashed our teeth at the latest lame CBS news: in the waning days of 2007, right before, oh, Christmas, CBS has let the entire StarTrek.com editorial team go. Effective immediately. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
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Back when I was just a young thing, an (old) man said to me, “Girl, you got a lot to learn about video on demand.” Or maybe not so much. He, with all seriousness, promised me one thing — there would be no VoD. Ever. He’d been in the industry for well over twenty years and on demand programming was always the golden ring. The rainbow. The dream.

Funny thing is, he’s still right. We don’t have true video on demand. We have a lot of video and a lot of demand, but actual, true video on demand remains elusive. There are several reasons, one of which being the root cause of the current writers strike: money. I will be focusing on the motion picture industry here, because the ownership rules are different in the movie biz.
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Thanks to the magic of TiVo, I caught up with what will probably be the Season Finale of Heroes, which is the latest casualty of the WGA strike. No more episodes have been produced, but as a ever-wavering fan of the show, I actually think that the strike might be a good thing for it, in terms of quality.

Here’s the thing that has always driven me nuts about Heroes: it acts as if it is a much much better show than it actually is, and Monday’s Finale was a microcosm of that.

[WARNING: there are spoilers for the Season Finale after the jump]

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I’m a sucker for serialized content. Since I was kid, I have sought out continuing story lines. Naturally, this lead to a youth wasted watching soap operas — though I never went there, it strikes me that at one point in my history, the ultimate girl youth rebellion was to choose All My Children over your mother’s Days Of Our Lives. Soap operas offered a glimpse into a glamorous, dangerous world that contrasted sharply with daily reality.

There is much to be said for the power of escapism and even the skeptics find themselves entrenched in the lives of the Rachel and Julie and Trish and David and Raven and Cash and all the other characters. The writers of soap operas are masters at creating new scenarios, introducing new drama, while making sure that the casual viewer is able to catch up with the story within moments. If you’re away for years, sure, there will be some disorientation, but not enough to make you throw up your hands and say, “That’s it! I’m never watching Young and the Restless again.”
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Outside the bubble, awareness of the Writer’s Guild of America strike is less than you’d think. For those of us who are living and breathing the strike, it seems that everyone should be talking about what’s going on. It turns out that this is not so. As the two parties sit down today to again try to find common ground, the average American, exhausted from a weekend of shopping, is discovering that TiVo is delivering less in the way of new programming and more in the way of wacky recommendations.

(Side note: how about that TiVo love letter on ”’The Simpsons”’ last night? I’ve long maintained that bad things happen to people who watch commercials…I was right!)

This post isn’t about the strike, per se. It’s more about how Hollywood simply doesn’t get today’s consumer. Or rather, Hollywood doesn’t get how today’s consumer is rejecting the notion of appointment television. A common ‘loper mantra is that we want it when we want it. Seems simple enough to understand.
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Remember a few months ago when NBC announced that they would air 30 half-hours of The Office? Here at ‘Loper HQ, where The Office runs neck-and-neck with Battlestar Galactica as our consensus favorite TV Show, there was much rejoicing at the anticipated bounty of hilarity and pathos that we were going to receive.

Well, not so much, as it turns out. Among the many many ironies created by the Writers strike is this: The Office is the first of the scripted prime-time shows to run out of of episodes, which means that this week’s episode is the last ep for, well — quite possibly, ever.

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Sometimes, you don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Artists across the entertainment industries — publishing, music, motion picture — earn money from their efforts in slightly different ways. For musicians, who earn a pittance from record sales, the real money comes from touring and merchandise.

Naturally, as sales have dropped, the labels have looked far and wide to find other sources of income. They see radio as a new cash cow (”can you believe they’re playing our music for free?”). And they see those lovely t-shirt and ticket dollars as theirs to share. After all, you know how hard A&R guys work while on tour.

The birth of the 360 deal — where artists and labels (and artists reps such as managers) — share in the proceeds of all money-making efforts. The New York Times has a lovely storyabout how this process is working for a band named “Paramore”. Since I believe it’s never too early to explore the magical world around us…
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As you obviously know, the Writers Strike started this week. And it looks like it’s going to be a long, hard slog that may not be resolved for months — maybe not even until the Actors and Directors contracts are up next June. That’s a long time, and while there are any number of articles discussing the anticipated consequences of the strike, what about the unanticipated consequences?

By definition, of course, those are impossible to predict. Which is why I’m going to predict them. So, without any further ado, here are six unanticipated consequences of the writers strike.

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I know, I know, you’re sick of hearing about the looming Writers Guild of America strike. Well, it’s looming no more. It’s here, and, as you know, the first victims will be shows such as “Late Night with David Letterman”, “The Daily Show”, and even “The Colbert Report”. While some of those shows might stand up to the scrutiny of reruns, I’m guessing there will be a lot of audience loss — though this might very well be a boon for HGTV.

It’s my job to think about the future and writing. Okay, fine, nobody gave me this job; I appropriated it. It’s not like there’s a paid position out there called “Thinker About Future and Writing” anyway. Oh, if there were, I’d find the resume I last updated a decade ago.

So here are today’s thoughts on the issue. This strike is about ongoing compensation for work performed. In the majority of cases, when authors sign a contract with a publisher, they license specific distribution rights for their work for a certain period of time. Depending on the contract, the specific rights and length of time varies. Then there’s the whole of issue of “in print” — a contractually squishy point that some publishers use to retain distribution rights despite the lack of serious exploitation.
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Unless a miracle happened over the weekend and I missed it, there’s a good chance that the writers in Hollywood are going to strike. As you know, the major issue on the table between the producers (the major studios and networks) and the writers relates to residuals for new media. One side says there’s no way to predict the future; the other side says “Remember the DVD!”

As a rallying cry, that’s not so bad.

New media is one of those fuzzy concepts — on the surface, it means any means of distribution not considered “traditional”, i.e, television or video. More specifically, it means distribution to your mobile phone or home computer. But it breaks down even further, and it’s helpful to understand the different models currently being contemplated. Once you understand those, you’ll see that “new media” isn’t so much a revolution as it is a way to expand the current distribution process.

For the sake of ease, I’m going to correlate the “new” to the standard terms used by the industry. Like I said, the basics aren’t all that different.
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