When I was a wee tyke, we had three television channels. That’s it. ABC, CBS and NBC. Sure, there was a distant, staticky, fourth quirky stepsister called PBS. But no one watched that. Except nerds. And us on Saturdays for a little known show called Soccer Made in Germany. Then along came Ted Turner. Our Atlantan native son gave us TBS that grew into the Super Station that soon spread nationwide. Then came the rest of the Turner empire: CNN, TNT, TCM and more. And then, thanks to the expansion of cable, came a hundred other cable networks. MTV, TLC, BET and more. Like salmon trying to swim upstream, they all jockeyed for position to find their place in the turbulent rapids of our media landscape. It seemed that was it for a while. Enveloped by our couches, we flipped back and forth between those hundred channels trying to figure out what was best. And then everything changed. Technical innovation gave way to digital proliferation, and soon every Tom, Dick and Harry could produce and distribute whatever their heart desired. We could watch anything we wanted anytime we wanted anywhere we wanted. Streaming services took root like weeds and nowadays we are bombarded by so much content we don’t know what to watch where or when. It’s hard to know what platform to go to or pay for to even see what it is they’re offering! Netflix? Amazon? Apple TV? Disney +? Hulu? Where the hell do we start?
The good news is this:
1. There’s lots to watch.
2. There’s lots to write.
All these platforms all need content. And it doesn’t write itself.
Mind you, the pay for writing for these companies may not always be comparable to what it was in the old days. But they all pay something. And chances are it’s more than you’re making now. Doing something you would probably rather be doing than what you are now.
So what’s stopping you?
After all, you can write what you want, where you want, when you want.
Starting now.