Story Number 1: Wired Magazine May 2003 (Issue 11.05) To Live and Die in L.A. I've been tipped to the network of semisecret cyberhallways, called tracking boards, that are open only to the most elite power players in the industry. In simplest terms, these boards are sophisticated chat rooms and BBSes where high-level executives at various studios trade information about potential projects. They may seem innocuous at first glance, but the boards are where a writer meets his fate. Before a script goes out, it either gets deep-sixed or hyped up. Often, it's said, execs will go online and leak privileged information or even lie about projects in order to drive prices up - or down. If the rumors are true, it means that the fix is in: major collusions between studios, arbitrary blackballing, a system that mocks any standard of fair play. It's not just scripts - books, directors, even actors are tracked. Full Story: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.05/hollywood.html --- Story Number 2: Online Journalism Review October 30, 2002 Hollywood's Hidden Digital Ether Within a year, thanks to this and parallel efforts, virtually all of young Hollywood was wired together in a guerrilla network so complete, that people on the film industry's bottom rung seemed suddenly to know everything worth knowing about a crucial commodity, hot scripts, while their older bosses, who weren't invited to the party, remained shut out. Thus was the "tracking monster" born - and with it, according to some, came new values that altered not just the film business, but film itself, as the race for material changed from a competition among Jeffrey Katzenberg-inspired "Golden Retrievers" to an intricately wired swarm in which young gatekeepers, sharing identical information, go thumbs up or thumbs down on new scripts, en masse, in a nanosecond. "I think its the major reason films have gotten worse, and scripts have been having a tough time selling," said David Warden, whose Warden, White & Associates is one of the entertainment industry's best known boutique writers agencies. Full Story: http://www.ojr.org/ojr/entertainment/1036017275.php --- Story Number 3: Online Journalism Review October 30, 2002 Where the Network is Today Today, most professional script tracking boards are set up as private, password-only networks hosted by commercial operations like Hollywood Media Corp's Filmtracker. After paying a subscription fee, users either create their own groups or request placement with an appropriate one. A new subscriber working for a producer with a Sony deal might get plugged into a group missing Sony representation, for example. Full Story: http://www.ojr.org/ojr/entertainment/1036017147.php -end- Art McGee Principal Consultant Virtual Identity Communications+Media+Technology 1-510-967-9381