Alternative media sees silver lining from strike

By Sue Zeidler

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Hollywood screenwriters' strike is an opportunity for alternative media companies, from DVD renters to cable television and the Web, to reach new audiences, according to entertainment industry executives.

"To the extent that people aren't watching the (television) networks, that's an interesting opportunity," said Peter Levinsohn, president of News Corp's Fox Interactive Media, home to the wildly popular MySpace online social network.

The three-week-old strike by the 12,000-member Writers Guild of America has sent late-night talk shows into reruns and halted work on dozens of prime-time comedies and dramas and several film projects.

Many networks had stockpiled episodes in anticipation of a strike, but it is widely expected they will need to resort to reruns, news or reality programming if the strike runs into January.

Purveyors of nonfiction content, like the Discovery network, which does not rely on writers for its programming, said they thought the strike had boosted viewership.

"I think it's helped," Discovery Communications Chief Executive David Zaslav told the Reuters Media Summit in New York on Wednesday.

"We've just had fantastic numbers, and ratings are growing across the board," said Zaslav, whose company is owned in part by Discovery Holding Co.

"When the broadcast networks are doing high (amounts of) original premiers, cable suffers," he said. But the inverse is also true, with cable generally benefiting in times such as the summer season, when networks tend not to feature first-run original programming, he said.  Continued...