May 16th, 2007
Massive Hollywood talent strike could be boon for digital content creators, sites
As explained in the Wall Street Journal today by prominent entertainment lawyer Kevin Morris, there could be a strike called for by the Screen Actors Guild, the Writers Guild of America and the Directors Guild of America.
Before I get to the point of this post, please don’t think most who would be affected will just sit idly in their mansions. Most don’t have mansions. We are, after all, talking about more than 100,000 actors, 13,000 directors and 15,000 writers.
Now with that established, we need to think about what these nearly 130,000 people will do with time on their hands.
Morris writes that with all this idle time, these “130,000 unemployed artists might find something to do when they are put on strike.
“And in so doing,” Morris continues, they may just start creating original content for the new media because it is easy and well, they’re not allowed to go to the set or the lot.”
Morris, who is founding and managing partner of L.A. based law firm Barnes, Morris, Klein, Mark, Yorn, Barnes & Levine then considers that once all this creative talent gets a taste of new media, they may not be so anxious to give it up once the presumed strike is settled.
The attorney envisions a scenario where an income stream is flowing to them via say, Joost and iTunes, as well as ad-supported sites.
Not only that, but once you give actors, directors and writers a dose of creative freedom, well, as Morris puts it, “they may enjoy the lack of interference from ’suits’ and become smitten with the ability to put their work out immediately and world-wide.”
Lack of interference from “suits.” I haven’t heard a phrase that liberating since, “free at last…”
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
