THE INTERNET IS rerouting the road to stardom and rewriting long-held beliefs about how entertainment hits are made.
Complete unknowns such as Judson Laipply are producing online videos ("Evolution of Dance") for the cost of a camcorder tape and attracting more viewers -- 34 million at last count -- than the average episode of "Seinfeld" in its heyday. A pair of new-age vaudevillians in Maine parlayed 101 bottles of Diet Coke and some Mentos into a $30,000 payday by allowing ads to be placed at the end of their video. And last month, Google acquired the video-sharing site YouTube for $1.6 billion, sending the message that it believes the consumergenerated video trend is here to stay.
Meanwhile in Hollywood, established media companies scramble to develop survival strategies. Disney and Warner Bros. are trimming the number of movies they distribute each year and spending more to promote those they do release. In New York, NBC Universal announced last month that it was eliminating 700 jobs and cutting back on scripted entertainment in prime time, after four successive quarters of declining profits.
It's easy to dismiss online videos, with their shaky camera work and sometimes amateurish performances. Despite their rough edges, though, Internet videos, produced on a shoestring and distributed outside the traditional studio and network systems, are remaking the culture and business of the entertainment industry. Two of the digital medium's most important new dynamics are "access for all" and "remarkability."
The foundation of the entertainment industry has long been that you had to pay your dues. That can take the form of working in the William Morris mailroom to learn the business or apprenticing with an accomplished cinematographer in the hope of getting a union card. But even after dues are paid, landing an audition with a director or scheduling a pitch meeting with a network exec requires a combination of talent, luck and connections.
The Internet entertainment economy is upending this hierarchical culture by granting access to all wannabe creators. Inexpensive cameras, editing software and a personal computer are all that's necessary to make an online video. Creative choices are made by creators, not by executives relying on audience polls.
