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Los Angeles Writers Guild Strike Analysis
By Los Angeles Internet Marketing | December 12, 2007
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Can’t resist putting up a post about this. I live four blocks away from CBS, and see the strikers in front of the studio daily. Especially since Joe Marchesse had to make a post about it on Mediapost.
Here was Joe’s take about the effect of the strike on the industry.
- This would accelerate the search for monetization methods of digital content (OK, I didn’t think of that!)
- Less New TV content - I did think of this one as the big drawback for studios
- Surplus of digital media talent - I’ll pretend I thought of that.
I also thought that writers would start going independent, and monetize their shows online.
However, my thinking changed once I talked to a couple of friends who are writers and producers. (Kinda sucks that writers just aren’t as forward thinking as online marketers)
One guy I talked to about the opportunity to go online said simply - “a movie costs thousands of dollars to produce(bare budget), I can’t get brand advertisers to sponsor my media - I’m screwed. I can’t make a living - period. The most profitable place for me to place my scripts on is crackle.com - and even then the payout will just barely cover my production costs.
In addition, right now the public is with the writers. In a few months, public opinion will swing against the writers as the thousands of other people unemployed by the strike get pissed - audio, production and building people.
The studios have enough content to scrape by - with shelved pilots, reruns etc. The only thing is that if they don’t have enough new content, more people will flock to the internet… but the studios can afford a couple percentage points in viewership…”
That was only one guy… next guy - producer…
David: “Hey, I know about this strike, but why don’t you just distribute your content online?”
Producer Friend: Gives weird look “And how do I monetize that?”
As I start bridging from online marketing - PPC, SEO and SMO to offline advertising, I see that advertisers still pay through the roof for branding - and that it doesn’t translate into similar CPM’s online.
Additionally, writers aren’t able to court advertisers individually.
One of the major reasons is simply scale. Advertisers don’t want to talk about expensive media buys unless they can buy scale, and the efficiency and comfort zone isn’t there yet with online media.
My dream is for someone with production experience to come in, and offer serious revenue sharing opportunity with writers, while simultaneously offering advertisers the scale they need, and take their cut… Dreams Dreams Dreams…
Till then, I think that pessimistic friends objection is correct…
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Topics: Offline Marketing, Radio TV advertising, Offline advertising, Los Angeles Internet Marketing, Historical lessons in business |