Warner Bros. & the Internet

The NY Times has a lengthy article today about the renewed focus on content at Time Warner. (The headline is 'Holy Cash Cow, Batman! Content is Back at Time Warner'.)

What's most interesting about the article is that Warner Bros. executives either aren't talking much about creating original content for the Internet ... the reporter didn't ask ... or the info simply didn't wind up in the story.

Instead, it sounds like Warner Bros. is mainly focused on using the Internet to distribute movies and TV shows. They're also a bit obsessed, like all studios, with stopping digital piracy.

Tim Arango writes:

The future, most agree, is seamless distribution of films to television using Internet technology. But the big question facing Hollywood is, how far off is that future?

That transition will be, and is, wrenching because studio executives must walk a fine line between preserving the traditional business, which still amounts to a vast majority of revenue and profits, and experimenting with new ways of distribution.

What about new ways of creating content? While 'The Dark Knight' is going to be one of the biggest big-budget hits of all time, there must be ways of telling stories for the Web and mobile devices that don't require a $185 million up-front investment (and that's before marketing).

No?

If Warner Bros.' top execs aren't thinking hard about that opportunity, I'd say that leaves a pretty big opening for independent content creators, wouldn't you?

Actually, there is a Warner Bros. venture to create original content for the Web, but it hasn't been making many waves since it started two years ago. It's called Studio 2.0. Here's one example of what they've done. Another project, T Works, was supposed to launch this spring, but is still "coming soon."

Here's an earlier Times article about Warner's original content creation efforts. Perhaps the highest-profile effort so far has been the 10-episode series Viralcom. On YouTube, the ten episodes have about 900,000 views altogether.