Television Writers Take Their Talents to the Web
Such assumptions were premature, however, as StrikeTV officially launched on July 4, 2008, with a “Coming Soon” video clip spotlighting the over forty webseries exclusively produced by Los Angeles-area union members. “Basically, StrikeTV is original content created by Hollywood professionals,” Peter Hyoguchi, a WGA member and conceiver of the project, told Variety. “The content we have ranges from comedy, drama, sci-fi, horror, game shows, soap operas to family films and animation. This is an opportunity for Hollywood professionals to experience and try something new with a very low risk factor.”
The collective resume of StrikeTV is impressive, with writers from The Daily Show, General Hospital, Friends, Frasier, Star Trek, thirtysomething, The L Word, Farscape and The Six Million Dollar Man amongst the lined-up talent. Specific projects include Global Warming, starring Kirsten Wiig of Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show’s Aasif Mandvi; House Poor by The Office writer/producer Lester Lewis; and The Challenge, written by sitcom veteran Lloyd Garver—whose credits include Family Ties, Happy Days and Alice—and starring Bob Newhart.
StrikeTV follows the basic business model of generating revenue through advertising and sponsorships. The initial start-up costs, reportedly less than ten thousand dollars, were paid by Hyoguchi and others, while content creators are responsible for acquiring their own funding for each project. Although the online network does not offer licensing fees for the programming, the writers do retain ownership and copyright control over their projects. Proceeds generated by StrikeTV during the first three months of operation, meanwhile, were donated to the Entertainment Assistance Program of the Actor’s Fund, which supports non-WGA members who were adversely affected by the strike.
Peter Hyoguchi and company were not the only television scribes to use the WGA work stoppage as a catalyst to exploit the World Wide Web as a media outlet. Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, spent the time developing—with assistance from his two brothers, Jed and Zack, and sister-in-law-to-be Maurissa Tancharoen—a three-act webseries musical, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. With the basic story of a “low-rent super-villain, the hero who keeps beating him up, and the cute girl from the laundromat he’s too shy to talk to,” the series features Neil Patrick Harris (Dr. Horrible), Nathan Fillion (Captain Hammer) and Felicia Day (Penny) and likewise premiered in July 2008, the same month that StrikeTV initially launched.
“When the strike happened, everything was about making online content,” Whedon explained to Matt Roush of TV Guide at the time. “But everything was very overblown. Or underblown. It was either me and my video camera in my backyard or let’s partner up and get millions of dollars. Neither of these things was gonna fit the paradigm that will make me a musical, so I finally decided to do it myself.” He added that the idea “was to show that you can do this on a very different scale than people are thinking about. I felt like we stretched our dollars just as far as they will go. It’s a pretty extraordinary piece even at the price tag it would cost to normally produce it if you couldn’t call in any favors.”
While Dr. Horrible and the shows featured on StrikeTV are all independently funded by their creators, other television writers have found financing for online projects through partnerships with the various entertainment production companies that have sprouted up on the Internet landscape. Before going out of business in 2009 due to financial difficulties, for instance, 60Frames enlisted Brent Forrester, a consulting producer for The Office, to create Erik the Librarian Mysteries—a webseries about a “reclusive librarian who falls in love with a mysterious stranger”—as one of its initial productions.
The O.C. creator Josh Schwartz, meanwhile, developed Rockville, CA for TheWB.com online network that “takes viewers to the front of the line and behind the soundboard of a fictional Hollywood rock club,” while Seth MacFarlane, the genius behind Family Guy, unveiled Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy in conjunction with Google and Media Rights Capital in 2008. And Stun Creative, a marketing and production company in Los Angeles, not only partnered with a group of television writers to create a new webseries but even cast the actual scribes in the acting parts. The Writers Room—as the series is entitled—takes place at a fictional late-night talk show and features Bruce Kirschbaum (Seinfeld), Ed Crasnick (Curb Your Enthusiasm), Evan Mann (How I Met Your Mother), Jeff Kahn (The Larry Sanders Show) and Rose Abdoo (Gilmore Girls), among others.
With a satisfactory conclusion to the WGA strike of 2007-2008, why have so many professional television writers taken their talents to the World Wide Web in the aftermath? Financial rewards are obviously significantly lower on such projects after all, especially compared to the budgets of actual television productions. The answer, however, lies in the fact that the webseries offers more freedom and creative control than any other narrative medium. In the end, television is a business and with the large amounts of money at stake, various levels of executives inevitably have a “say” in the execution of any television show. This can in turn lead to a series evolving into something quite different than originally conceived in order to appeal to as many viewers as possible, while “risk-taking” on a project is a rare exception as opposed to the norm.
“The biggest difference in doing something for the Web is that you get total creative freedom,” Josh Schwartz told Vanity Fair in March 2009 in regards to Rockville, CA. “I didn’t have to get any script notes, I didn’t have to get notes on casting. You are able to do what you want, and succeed or fail by your own merits.”
On November 8, 2007, just mere days after the strike by the WGA commenced, Entertainment Weekly wrote, “It’ll be interesting to see what 12,000 unemployed screenwriters can do on the Internet.” With the likes of StrikeTV, Joss Whedon, Josh Schwartz and a plethora of other writers making the leap, it looks like the magazine’s question has finally been answered.
Anthony Letizia (September 21, 2009)
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