The trend continues; managers-administrators are being squeezed out of the value chain by the “talent”, the creative class. Sports agents no longer make more money than their sportsmen, as was prevalent in the early days of football. Script writers in Hollywood are following suit with the WGA strike, pushing the film and TV entertainment value chain for a bigger percentage of earnings.
The internet is touted as the catalyst for this dis-intermediation. Mark Andreessen paints a convincing scenario of how the creative class will distribute their work directly, without the need to go through the big studios. Thanks to new video technology, the cost of productions is dropping; no need for extensive fund raising. And great material is picked up and distributed rapidly by the social filtering sites, like youtube or digg; no need for massive marketing and distribution budgets.