{"id":6266,"date":"2008-01-12T09:11:43","date_gmt":"2008-01-12T09:11:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/e-commerce\/striking-writers-to-launch-new-company.html"},"modified":"2008-01-12T09:11:43","modified_gmt":"2008-01-12T09:11:43","slug":"striking-writers-to-launch-new-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/technology\/striking-writers-to-launch-new-company.html","title":{"rendered":"Striking Writers to Launch New Company"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Perhaps the headline of this post should be ended with the he disclaimer &quot;With the help of investors who may or may not pony up $30 million.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>The worst nightmare of the studios and networks dealing with the writer&#8217;s strike is not that it will go on but instead that the out of work writers will start a new company which allows writers to develop content which viewers can view on the web.<\/p>\n<p>According to an <a href=\"http:\/\/newteevee.com\/2008\/01\/11\/striking-writers-to-launch-online-video-co-seeking-30m\/\">article <\/a>on swarmcast, some of the writers are indeed now looking to start their own production and distribution company.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/aaronmendelsohn.com\/\"><em>Aaron Mendelsohn<\/em><\/a><em>, writer of the Disney film Air Bud and an active WGA member, is captaining the efforts, and says he has gotten a group of &ldquo;A-list&rdquo; film and TV writers on the team. He&rsquo;s also partnering with online community experts from Silicon Valley and raising &ldquo;north of $30 million&rdquo; in venture capital, with the idea of launching a company called Virtual Artists later this year.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>On the technology side, the company is looking to foster communities around its content and include viewers in the development process. <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.civicactions.com\/team\/henripoole\/blog\"><em>Henri Poole<\/em><\/a><em> of CivicActions and <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.behlendorf.com\/~brian\/\"><em>Brian Behlendorf<\/em><\/a><em> of the Apache Project and CollabNet are serving as advisers.<\/p>\n<p><\/em>If this company does get funding it could be a very scary problem for Hollywood to have to deal with. In fact if it is&nbsp;able to make money by distributing content online it will show how disruptive technology is now changing how writers negotiate. All of Hollywood will be shaken up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Perhaps the headline of this post should be ended with the he disclaimer &quot;With the help of investors who may or may not pony up $30 million.&quot; The worst nightmare of the studios and networks dealing with the writer&#8217;s strike is not that it will go on but instead that the out of work writers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[171,172,118],"tags":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6266"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6266\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}