Hollywood and Silicon Valley couldn't be more different--from the clothes worn and cars driven, to the focus. Hollywood on content, Silicon Valley on new ways to do digital distribution. Hollywood's worried about losing control of digital revenues (which is exactly what the writers' strike was about) as well as piracy.
But now, Northern and Southern California are coming together. Today, the William Morris Agency announced it's partnering with Silicon Valley VC firms Accel Partners and Venrock to invest in a Southern California based "new" or digital media startups. And since so many of new media revenue models are about mobile distribution, AT&T is a limited partner in the deal.
Clearly, this is a sign of convergence. And unlike previous rounds of investment in new technologies, this time they're looking close to home, where collaboration between the content creators and tech gurus is more likely to happen in earnest. The fund will start off with just tens of millions of dollars, but it'll be flexible--allowing for small investments and for the fund to grow.
AT&T has plenty of content deals already, so it's looking for new technologies to make it easier to monetize the content on their cell phones, namely by running ads. And AT&T has invested in Media Rights Capital, but this is its most active deal of this sort yet.
Content creation and distribution is changing every day and everyone wants a piece of the new companies that are going to rule this new world.
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