I have no idea who will prevail in the current screenwriters’ strike. If I have sympathy for a side, it is probably the writers, since they have some valid points, and appear to be marginally less greedy than the networks and the studios. <\/p>\n
But it really doesn’t matter who wins that battle. Because that’s not the real battle. <\/p>\n
The real question is, do we really care about TV anymore, full stop. The answer is, of course, yes, but perhaps not as much as the studios and the writers’ guild would like to believe. <\/p>\n
Because I don’t think network TV is going to be the winner here. Unlike the last strike in 1988, when folks turned to repeats of shows they hadn’t caught the last time around, now we have real alternatives. And we aren’t limited to what the networks, all gamillion of them, want to show or when they want to show it.<\/p>\n
In about four to six weeks when the current inventory of new episodes is depleted and we enter the repeat zone, we will get our first glimpse at how the social media explosion could play out. <\/p>\n
What will we see? Here’s my prediction:<\/p>\n
Netflix will do quite well. Certainly within the current subscriber base as we actually have time to watch old TV shows and movies that we meant to see but didn’t. They *must* have new subscriber campaigns ready. Not like the strike was a big surprise. <\/p>\n
We’ll be watching even more online amateur video – long, short, episodic, and everything in between. For amateurs, talented and un-, their moment in the sun. Will everyone be a brilliant success? No. Some of it will be really really really bad (although with shows like Caveman setting the bar…)\u00a0 But we are going to discover some really talented folks online in the next few weeks,\u00a0 and not just comics, pundits and musicians. Much of this material is already there, online, waiting for us to find it. Well, now, we’ve got the time. Carpe diem. <\/p>\n
I’ll also be interested in what happens with online product swap services like Swaptree,<\/a> whose president Greg Boesel I met at Web Inno<\/a> last night. Not as easy as just paying the fee to Netflix every month, but folks now may be more receptive to the effort required to get started swapping the books, cds and dvds they no longer want for ones they do. <\/p>\n What do you think will happen? <\/p>\n Tags: screenwriters’ strike<\/a>, social media<\/a>, netflix<\/a>, media shift<\/a>, Swaptree<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have no idea who will prevail in the current screenwriters’ strike. If I have sympathy for a side, it is probably the writers, since they have some valid points, and appear to be marginally less greedy than the networks and the studios. But it really doesn’t matter who wins that battle. Because that’s not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}