Scenario: If you can find time away from other work – and if you can afford the meager development costs – then you have time to pursue your creative vision, with hopes of wild riches and fortune.

Question: are we talking web startups or garage bands?

With each passing day, Web 2.0 looks less like a traditional industry, in which services or widgets (the old kind) are sold for profit. Rather, it resembles something vaguely like Hollywood. Keep it up, and you’ll see that this Rorschach Test keeps showing the same monster with a different name:

• This industry features vast numbers of candidate projects, produced at a grass-roots level and almost always initially financed by the creators themselves. Are we talking about indie films shot on video – or the latest Facebook App?
• This industry is characterized by fierce competition for recognition, in which middlemen select – from myriad prototypes – a small number of candidates for funding and promotion. Are we talking about A&R Reps and television producers – or angels and VCs?
• In this industry, ideas are easily stolen or imitated, so easily that often we see three or four similarly themed projects in the pipeline at once. Are we talking about this year’s smackdown between ‘Cashmere Mafia’ and ‘Lipstick Jungle’ – or Twitter and Pownce?

The conclusion: if you’re curious about the future of Web 2.0, you might want to ring up your out-of-work actor friends and get a crash course in Entertainment Industry 101. Once every college had its own slate of campus bands, chasing the dream. Soon each one will have a handful of web startups as well.

Some lessons we can learn from the comparison:

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Not long ago Media Predict users generated perfect forcasts for television cancellations for the fall season. Our users were perfect in the spring too, recording 100% accuracy in markets forecasting whether bubble shows would survive. See a full listing of television markets.  

Over at ABC, living to see another day are “Boston Legal,” “Eli Stone,” and “Dirty Sexy Money.” “Scrubs” will make the switch to ABC after NBC declined to renew it. New shows include “Life on Mars” (in the plush post-“Grey’s Anatomy” time slot) and “Opportunity Knocks,” a reality game show from Ashton Kutcher. Here is ABC’s complete fall schedule.

“Moonlight” got the axe from CBS (no thanks to “Jericho,” another show with a small but rabid fan base that underperformed after execs renewed it for a second season). There are already rumors that Mick St. John will find his way to the CW, however, so “Moonlight” fans shouldn’t despair just yet. Returning shows on CBS include “The New Adventures of Old Christine,” “How I Met Your Mother,” “The Big Bang Theory,” and “Two and a Half Men.” A minute-by-minute breakdown of the CBS presentation can be found here.

NBC allegedly attempted to kill the upfronts by announcing their fall schedule last month. In case you missed it then, check out this recap of NBC’s fall/winter schedule. Highlights include “Knight Rider” and a spin-off of “The Office.”

 FOX will announce their fall line-up tomorrow. Check back then to find out what shows will flank “American Idol.”

As the writers’ strike drags much of television and film to a halt, viewers might begin looking for alternatives in the coming weeks. But they probably won’t look to what was supposed to shake up the media world forever, “user-generated content.” Indeed this once-magical concept has seemingly gone the way of the Tamagotchi and Zoomba Pants.

Of course, a year ago some bloggers were certain of the opposite. With the growth of MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube, users would take control of “old media.” Via new distribution platforms – video-sharing sites and blogs – freelance content producers would address audiences directly, delivering the original, uninhibited content that people really desired. And “old media” would suffer because of it.

But ask your friends what they’ll do when the strike causes new episodes of, say, “Gossip Girl” to run dry. Chances are they won’t turn to “The Halls” – a similarly themed, once-viral soap produced by Columbia students last year. Rather they’ll ride out the storm by downloading those Showtime shows they heard about but never saw – or renewing that Netflix subscription once again.

Indeed, far from presenting any threat to traditional media, user-generated content has only expanded it. After all, if there’s one law in the history of media, it’s a relentless drive toward diversity. Home video didn’t drive out movie theaters – instead the entire industry grew. Cable didn’t drive out network TV. Simply, we’ll take content in whatever manner and setting we can get it, and there’s no end to that tendency in sight.

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Lori Culwell To Be Offered a Publishing Contract from Touchstone Imprint of Simon and Schuster

Media Predict and Touchstone Books, an imprint of publishing company Simon & Schuster, Inc, today announced that Hollywood Car Wash by Lori Culwell is the grand prize winner of Project Publish, a book contest originally launched on May 21. Lori will be offered a publishing contract with Touchstone Books. Senior Editor Amanda Patten will edit.

Hollywood Car Wash is a novel about a young actress who finds herself thrust into the Hollywood machine, where she is reshaped and renamed, and learns the secrets, as well as the price, of celebrity.  The book was originally released in March through iUniverse/ASJA, and has consistently been at the top of their bestseller list, as well as reaching #45 on Amazon.com. Culwell submitted the book to Project Publish after her husband saw a New York Times story on Media Predict.

Several Touchstone senior editors, under the direction of Vice President, Editor-in-Chief Trish Todd, selected the winner from five finalists announced last month.

“I am so thrilled to find a home for Hollywood Car Wash at Touchstone,” said Culwell.  “I’m really looking forward to working with the team, and to bringing the book to a much wider audience.  Also, I really admire and appreciate the innovation of the Media Predict team in demonstrating their vision.   Thanks so much to everyone.”
 
Contestants for the contest included referrals from well-known literary agencies and bestsellers at print-on-demand sites Lulu and iUniverse. Other contestants were drawn from hundreds of proposals directly submitted via the Media Predict site.

Media Predict congratulates Lori Culwell. And special thanks all of the 50 contestants who took part in Project Publish!  

We named five finalists today in Project Publish, which Media Predict has conducted in conjunction with Touchstone Books, an imprint of publishing company Simon & Schuster, Inc. Contestants for the contest included referrals from well-known literary agencies and best-sellers at print-on-demand sites Lulu and iUniverse. Other contestants were drawn from hundreds of proposals directly submitted via the Media Predict site.

Since it was launched, Project Publish has attracted international media attention including articles in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Economist, and The International Herald Tribune, and a feature on American Public Radio.

Several Touchstone senior editors independently selected five finalists to compete for future publication with the imprint:

• Dirty Cookbook, a humorous novel by Jason Clampet, of Philadelphia, PA: In this outrageously funny tale of sexual misadventures, Paul Chambers and his bachelor friends have discovered one of the best-kept secrets of dating: few women can resist the romantic allure of a wonderful meal prepared by a man. Paul and his friends make it their mission to perfect every recipe and record the greatest hits of their cooking and dating lives in their “Dirty Cookbook.”
• Hollywood Car Wash, a novel by Lori Culwell, of Los Angeles, CA: In a shockingly accurate look at the entertainment world, a normal college student in Michigan appears in a TV pilot that gets picked up by a network. She then undergoes the “Hollywood Car Wash” consisting of losing twenty pounds, getting new teeth and blonder hair, and accessorizing with a megastar boyfriend with a big secret.
• Think Twice, Click Once: The Little Black Book of E-Style, a non-fiction book by Jan O’Neil, of Norfolk, MA: What’s the window to your professional image? Today, it’s your “E-Style.” Think Twice, Click Once enhances your e-mail management and writing skills, providing up-to-date know-how and informative and humorous anecdotes from America’s top executives.
• The Didymus Contingency, a fantasy thriller by Jeremy Robinson, of Barrington, NH: If you could go back in time and witness any event, where would you go? Dr. Tom Greenbaum faces that question after successfully discovering the secret to time travel, he knows the time, place and event he will witness: the death and failed resurrection of Jesus Christ.
• Navassa Island Murderers, a historical book by Peter O. Whitmer, of Boston, MA: Could an illiterate deaf-mute Black teen, a defendant in America’s largest murder trial, possibly topple the U.S. President? The answer is yes. This historical work traces a bizarre and fascinating series of events surrounding Congress’s 1856 U.S. Guano Act and a “Haitian Relocation Plan” for slaves – a plan that left hundreds in horrifying labor conditions in the Windward Passage on Navassa Island.

In the next phase of the contest, the five finalists will post expanded excerpts from their books on the Media Predict site. Media Predict users then will evaluate the expanded proposals via prediction markets until Tuesday, October 9 when a grand-prize winner will be announced. As in the initial selection of finalists, Touchstone editors will make an independent judgment of which book to choose for future publication.

So the race is on – predict who will walk away with the grand prize today. See a full listing of new finalist markets here.

As many of you have noticed, we’re in the current issue of The New Yorker. (See the full story here.)

What can we say? James Surowiecki knows his stuff.

The tenure of former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel, who resigned yesterday, will certainly leave a lasting impression. Prominently, Semel – a former Hollywood executive – presided over efforts to bring Big Tech and Big Media together, in part by developing an entertainment division in Santa Monica. Semel is replaced by Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, an all-around “tech guy” who will focus on reducing Google’s advantages in search and advertising.

So Yahoo may return to its roots, at least for now, leaving the classic Media-Tech divide unbridged. That’s fine with Michael Arrington of TechCrunch. “The valley will take over Hollywood,” he concluded. “Not the other way around.”

On the other side, Sony’s Howard Stringer also chimed in on the topic last week in the Financial Times, with some pungent words describing how media executives often think about Silicon Valley.

“You’re using our content to drive your new global companies and getting rich in the process,” he said.
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Interest in Media Predict remains high since our launch at the beginning of last week.

This week’s edition of the The Economist highlights the far-reaching potential of Media Predict, outlining our Project Publish contest with Touchstone Books and stating, “Show business may gain even more than publishing does.”

You can also hear an interview with founder Brent Stinski on “Future Tense” an American Public Media program carried on National Public Radio stations across the country. Play it now: RealAudio :: MP3 :: iTunes.

In media there’s always been a handy fallback. If a summer blockbuster flops or a hyped series fails, then there’s always the reassurance that, hell, media is crap shoot anyway. As the saying goes, “Nobody knows anything.” We see it regularly in the press – and so often in Variety that attribution isn’t even required.

“Nobody knows anything,” William Goldman originally wrote in Adventures in the Screen Trade. “Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess.”

Case in point: every studio turned down “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” “Why did Paramount say yes?” writes Goldman. “Because nobody knows anything. And why did all the other studios say no? Because nobody knows anything . . . [N]obody, nobody – not now, not ever – knows the least goddamn thing about what is or isn’t going to work at the box office.”

Do you really buy it? Well, the media decision-makers have certainly made some monster mistakes:
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