William Morris Launching VC Fund

Focused on "reducing the friction" between Hollywood and Silicon Valley, the William Morris Agency and two prominent VCs - Accel Partners and Venrock - are launching an investment fund focused on digital entertainment, according to the NYT and LAT.

AT&T, an investor in the Endeavor-affiliated Media Rights Capital, is also a limited partner in the fund, apparently looking for opportunities in mobile entertainment and advertising.

Expect the focus to be on technology, not content. Per LAT, the fund "will make investments of less than $1 million in young companies that help foster growth in areas including broadband, wireless, gaming, advertising, entertainment and emerging media platforms."

That said, both Venrock and Accel have invested before in companies producing original content. Venrock has money in National Banana, which was founded by Jerry Zucker to produce and distribute short-form comedy. (Check out the site's wonderfully tongue-in-cheek "About" page link.)

Accel invested in Matt and Ben's Live Planet and On Networks, both also producers of original internet content, as well as in Facebook, which, like MySpace, is a technology company being driven ever closer to admitting it's also a media company and making investments in content.

It will be interesting to see what kind of opportunities this creates for WMA's talent, though finding a Funny or Die for whichever mega-star WMA represents probably isn't the point of the partnership.

In any case, it looks like Sand Hill Road is ready to give Hollywood another chance to demonstrate we understand what a scalable business is -- the difference between YouTube (make billions!) and a web series that 's a hit on You Tube (make thousands!). And given how internet technologies promise to disrupt the oligopoly of big media, that's a good thing no matter what.

Web Pilot

As we expand UH into a resource for the talent community exploring the creative and business aspects of new media, we will post bits of news about what's going out there. Comment, question, send us posts about what you know and what you're doing, and look for the new UH: Artists l Audience l Business in the coming weeeks. -TES

NewTeeVee writes today about UNDER THE ARCHES, a "reality" show that began as a series of short videos online and is now being turned into a "pilot" by a company called Madwood Entertainment.

NYU student Sean Patrick Murray, who created the show, describes it on Facebook as "8 college kids in NYC, the real "Gossip Girl." You can see the 7-minute pilot there or get a taste here on the Gawker post, which described the show as "reality schtick - [all] about the fast-moving-cloud shots, the angsty Z-100 soundtrack and the whiny blond chicks" and creator Murray as "either a complete genius or a total tool."

According to NewTeeVee, the distribution plan is "to launch a video destination site that will stream ad-supported shows for free" and then “hyper-distribute the show to other video sharing-sites and social networks."

I like that plan to build audience, but whether it's already the big win Murray suggests or just the beginning of a strategy still to be tested, we'll see. What do you think?