Sam and Jim are two guys who write scripts in Hollywood and they have a podcast. They're also big believers in the future of the Internet as TV. Their latest podcast is particularly relevant to this particular blog: they're another voice that sees the inevitability of an Internet which will empower writers and creative talents. But I don't agree with them on all counts. Have a listen for yourself. It's not short. Not much is even all that new. But much of it is well said (hey, they're writers).

I did like what they touch on regarding "spec scripts" and how writing TV specs is such a waste of creative energy. Having written my fair share of TV specs, I totally agree. Writing specs involves a ton of energy, if you wanna write something good enough to get hired from. But you're writing these things just to get a job--they're "resume pieces." And you don't have any chance of getting them made. They're dead on the page as soon as you write them, since the only purpose of a spec TV script is to show your writing ability to get hired on a show, rather than actually writing something that is going to be produced. So they sorta suggest that in the near future, writers will be better off investing that energy into scripts that they can actually make (thanks to the power of Internet distribution).

But I don't agree with them that "you" can't go off and make TV shows for the Internet as well as Hollywood can. Or maybe they're not talking to me when they say "you." Maybe they're talking to bozos with video-cameras who post pranks on YouTube. I'm not sure. Hey, good TV is hard. Hollywood fails half the time, as is evidenced by all the un-aired pilots and half-baked series that get canceled in the first season.

They do acknowledge that budgets don't have to be as big in the digital era. That the Web and accompanying technologies make things cheaper, especially when we excise the parasites (e.g., studios) who really don't offer much to improve the quality of a show, but take an awful lot of cash out of a budget. However, Sam and Jim don't yet see that the production values of Hollywood will be duplicated by "some guys in a garage" in the not so distant future (and I'm not talking about making Michael Bay's Transformers here, though a time will come when that level of CGI will be duplicated by college kids as well; instead I'm talking about something more like Arrested Development or The Office). I think Sam and Jim really are writers, full stop, and they might not realize that digital technologies are accelerating at the same rate as the Internet-based distribution platform. Cameras and equipment are getting better and cheaper. And expertise is becoming more widely dispersed outside of the traditional production centers. A rarer commodity than production values will be actors of the caliber we expect to see in a Network show. But again, we'll find those talents in stranger places too. Over time, Internet content might even alter our expectations of what an actor should look and sound like (go back and watch older movies and you see that it's an evolving aesthetic anyhow). But good acting will be a rarity.

And ultimately, I agree with them that Internet content has not paid much attention to the quality of storytelling. But I disagree with them when they (seem to) suggest that this can't happen without Hollywood writers such as, ahem, themselves. Good writers are very rare. They're the rarest of elements in the filmmaking equation, in fact. But they don't exist only in Hollywood. There is nothing magic about that hallowed ground. And while Hollywood has made it a business to pick through the thousands of talentless hacks to find the real storytellers, the Internet itself (or at least the audiences) will also begin a process of mining for the gold from a much bigger pool of dreamers. Because the truth is only a small percentage of the best storytellers ever actually move to Hollywood in the first place. That's right--there are more good writers than Hollywood will ever catch sight of. People choose not to move to Hollywood for myriad reasons, or never have such a choice at all. And some of those people can tell stories just as well or better than the best working today. Yes, Hollywood offers rather effective Darwinian selection for the best writers, but the Internet as a whole will serve up even better natural selection.

There is also a craft--a process of developing stories--that Hollywood has honed quite effectively, and which gets passed down to working Hollywood writers. But talent is the real key, and the craft will also be developed in the remoter corners of the world with some time and some trial and error.

I sorta sense that these guys are excited by the power that the Internet offers creatives such as themselves, but they perhaps also underestimate the potential for the Hollywood model to be duplicated in Minnesota, or Toronto, or Bombay. YouTube is crap, not because Hollywood has an exclusive lock on "the secret." YouTube is crap because it's just a clearing house for, well, crap. As Jim and Sam point out, the future "channels" will be companies or even individuals who select the best comedy, drama and non-fiction for us to watch on our Internet connected 52" LCD HD TV's with five point surround. And the talent to deliver those comedies and dramas will come from unlikely places. The clock is ticking down.