• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, July 8, 2008

It's called Strike.tv -- but it's not about any current strike. It may be about more money.

A new Web site, Strike.tv, was started as a result of last winter's writers' strike. It features 40-odd short-form clips from top TV/film writers -- all with the intent of helping Hollywood crew members hurt by the strike.

While philanthropy is a part of its credo, Strike.tv also wants to make money, though its founders didn't exactly say how this would be done. The betting is that it'll comes from your friendly online advertisers.  Of course, that's not so hard these days. You get a little traffic and Google can set you up real nice and easy.

It's not surprising it has come to this. Coming off those sometimes-testy negotiations with the studios - and after reaching out to major media agencies and advertisers during the strike -- writers, and other TV and film professionals realize, more than ever, that the real money for digital video these days come from your friendly marketers.

The initial message is a good one. But the secondary message -- one of profit - is a lot harder to come by.  Like everyone else in the real entertainment business world, traditional TV and/or online advertisers want to see numbers -- actual audience, demographics, the quality of the viewer, and some much more. Will Strike.tv be offering up some kind of marketing plan to lure audiences -- or will it be just a low-key, word-of-mouth affair?

Word about Strike.tv came just days before news that writers' revenues rose 4%, to a record $943 million in the fiscal year ended March 31, reflecting accelerated work on feature scripts --  this despite the Writers Guild of America strike.  (WGA members struck for 100 days, from Nov. 5 to February 12.)  The numbers broke down this way: Feature film work jumped nearly 16%, to $502.5 million, while TV earnings slipped 6.8%, to $437.3 million.  

An independent TV/film Web site puts writers, and other creatives, in the same business as TV and film producers.

Good or bad art aside, now everyone is making more fragile art -- and commerce -- decisions. That's a harder story to write .