• The New York Times, Wednesday, October 25, 2006 11:30 AM

United Talent Agency, one of Hollywood's largest talent agencies, is now trawling the Web for up-and-coming creators of Internet video content, and finding work for them. It's not necessarily in TV and movies, but Web-based advertising and entertainment. UTA is home to movie stars like Vince Vaughn and Jack Black, and filmmakers and producers like M. Night Shyamalan and David Chase.

It used to be that agencies like UTA would search for talent to bring into Hollywood. But this time around, the idea is to recruit not only the next generation of television and film writers, but also the next content creators for Web portals and ad agencies. To begin, UTA is devoting three of its agents full-time to finding talent on the Web.

"The barrier to entry is so low, everybody is now a potential artist," says Brent Weinstein, the head of UTA Online, as the new unit is named. "So there's this great unwashed of talent out there, 99.999 percent of which is probably not good enough to have a traditional film and television career, but on the Internet, a lot of different types of things go."

In a departure from the Hollywood agency norm, UTA Online will accept unsolicited submissions and display them on a new Web site. It also has the power to sign clients without the approval of more-established departments.

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