• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, November 7, 2007

The ebb and flow of media companies now suggests smaller, more innovative companies are better business. Is that what current striking TV and film writers want?

Barry Diller will break up his Internet/Home Shopping Network, IAC/InterActiveCorp., into five publicly traded units. This follows in the wake of Viacom Inc. breaking up into Viacom and CBS. Belo Corp. and E.W. Scripps have done the same.

Major investors feels that Time Warner should do the same -- or, at least, Time Warner Cable and AOL. Tribune Company, which, if it doesn't get a waiver from the FCC for the company's ownership of newspapers and TV stations in the same market, won't be sold -- and will then get a breakup whether it wants it or not.

Does a writer's strike factor into any of this? Perhaps. TV writers want a meaningful revenue share of DVD and new digital platforms. Big media seems to be able to sustain strikes better than the smaller company. In 1988, the last time writers walked out, the strike lasted 22 weeks and cost the industry $500 million.

The business was smaller then. By any estimation that means this new work stoppage could last a long time.

Media companies don't see their stock prices growing much -- and they are under pressure to add new revenues to their coffers. New digital platforms are the future ticket. But right now -- in the short term -- spinning off businesses as separate companies seem to be an answer. IAC's stock jumped almost 8% yesterday on the news of its breakup into smaller companies.

A theory has been that smaller companies are more aggressive and more responsive to the marketplace. For years, consumer advocates have said that as well -- that much of the media is bad and big.

One wonders if all this applies to the striking TV writers. If a smaller, aggressive TV or film producer would give up some corporate digital, cable and/or DVD rights, it would make for better paid and happier writers.

Would that make for better TV?

New, smaller TV companies might then elect not to give so many notes. That would also make TV writers happier. There's precedent here. HBO always seems to let their writers-producers virtually run wild with their imagination -producing some spectacular results - and some spectacular failures.

Break up big media, give writers a little more, and suffer the wild new-world swings of TV programming .