Facibus On Blogging

It might happen.

Marc Andreessen has seen a few trends come and go in his years as a Silicon Valley insider.  He’s now saying that the current film/TV writer’s strike will accelerate the growth of new media -

We all know the list: the Internet, social networking, user-generated content, blogging, video games, mobile phones, you name it. All the activities that consumers have discovered and adopted since the last writers’ strike in 1988, that they just love, and that have already been siphoning away time, attention, and money from TV and movies even without a strike.

And he predicts:

However, in the event of a long-term strike, out of the ashes of the traditional model would — I believe — come the birth of certainly dozens, maybe hundreds, and possibly even thousands of new media companies, rising phoenix-like into the global entertainment market, financed by venture capital, creating amazing new properties, employing large numbers of people, and rewarding their creators as owners.

Writer’s strike or not, there are more alternatives to traditional “let’s shovel it out the door” TV than ever before. I know that I’m hooked to at least one webisode only series. Are blogs a serious new media competitor for TV? I know that they certainly are for me - I watch very little scheduled programming any more. I haven’t thrown away my television - yet - because I watch DVDs on it when I need a break from work. But I also watch downloads of some TV shows on my MacBook and my iPod (and when I can organise it, my phone), read ebooks, sit and text-chat on Twitter and Google Chat, and, of course, read other people’s blogs. I know people that do many of these things and more in an integrated setting using a Media Center PC or similar setup (I’m not quite there yet).

Ironically - one of the few shows I do watch (Red Dwarf) has just started on ABC2. Back soon