Journalists, Pets: Future of New Media Worth Fighting For

Our message that this strike is a fight for the future has been getting ample backing from business reporters. Here's the UK's Guardian Unlimited:

The internet is set to overtake magazines to become the world's third largest advertising medium in 2010, according to a new report. Media planning and buying agency ZenithOptimedia's global advertising report estimates that in 2010 the internet ad market will be worth almost $61bn, compared with the magazine market at around $60.5bn.

And as more ad spending gravitates online, you can be sure premium video content is going to pay off quite nicely.

Meanwhile, right here in the present, there are some inspiring independent online video success stories. The poster boy for indie online success is the black clad advice guru of Ask a Ninja. (He gave us some tips, too!) This article in TV Week profiles video content creators at various levels of success and notoriety. But the Ninja demonstrates that when you have a hit, the rewards are there. One-hundred large a month buys a lot of throwing stars.

A big part of what makes online so exciting for the companies (and thus, for all of us) is the flexibility of how content is both delivered and consumed. For example, there are conventional download services like iTunes, through which Twentieth Century Fox will begin offering movies in early 2008. And there are new venues that most people over nineteen probably can't wrap their heads around. In the virtual world Gaia, characters will soon be able to sit down and watch real movies from WB and Sony.

It's especially enjoyable that whenever NBCU's Jeff Zucker tries to downplay this exploding medium, he inadvertently states our case in wonderfully pithy quotes. A friend writes:

This is hilarious -- Jeff Zucker, in discussing NBC's plans to get paid for the Internet, pretty much says *exactly* what the writers have been saying all along. His line about not wanting to replace
analog dollars with digital pennies is especially nice. We should hire
him to write our signs.

Sounds like the threat of the NEP to us! (At least the half we know about. Stay tuned!)

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OTHER LINKS

- "Sorry, Internet" has gone viral. The video by Colbert Report writer Frank Lesser showing animals going on a sympathetic "no cute on YouTube" strike has prompted many responses. My favorite: "Kali Supports the Writers."

- As Nikki reported earlier, I Want Media announced that "Writers on Strike" received the most votes in its week-long poll to name the 2007 "Media Person of the Year." "The Hollywood screenwriters attracted a whopping 56 percent of the total vote." I think it's cool that voters thought the way we've been articulating our case deserved some recognition. But this is one award I would have been happy not to be eligible for.

- WGA supporter and regular commenter on this site VDO Vault has created the writers strike mega-mix!

Worthy of inclusion on VDO's list is "The Underdog" by Spoon. It's getting a lot of airplay lately; maybe some moguls should have a listen?

You got no time for the messenger,
got no regard for the thing that you don't understand,
you got no fear of the underdog,
that's why you will not survive.

RUMOR: Whenever Nick Counter hears those lyrics, his ears burn.
STATUS: Unconfirmed.