Unable to get the studios to pay them a pittance for online content, some writers are trying to do it for themselves.
I can’t say I’m surprised by this at all, and hastening the demise of the current system seems like an inevitable outcome of the strike. The studios still don’t get that they no longer own the sole means of transmission, and they don’t seem to understand that their ability to package and market content is at risk when you can get all your services ala carte.
There’s already some interesting independent web-centric production that started to show up before the strike began. Accelerating this trend won’t be good for the studios in the long run.
But I’m guessing the current mentality is, for some executives anyway, basically built around logic that begins and ends with “screw those guys”.
At the same time it looks like that some producers are starting to realize that they’re in competition with each other, not the writers. And some of them have more to lose, it turns out.
