Strike.TV was born on the picket line.
The new Web site, which started this week, was conceived of during the Hollywood writers strike earlier this year.
It now feels like a millennium ago, so if your memory is foggy, that was when writers struck in a dispute with the studios — largely over how to divvy up revenue from online entertainment — that effectively shut down Hollywood for more than three months.
At the time, writers — ironically or fittingly, depending on your point of view — got their message out in Web videos that were much watched on the strike’s unofficial blog, United Hollywood, and on YouTube.
Months later and after much anticipation, Strike.TV has gotten under way as a portal for professionally created Web series. The site debuts with 10 original series and promises more than 40 series eventually.
Its slogan: “Hollywood Unplugged.”
Among the series: “Global Warming,” starring Kristin Wiig (“Saturday Night Live”) and Aasif Mandvi (“The Daily Show”). Wiig plays a character who works in an office and falls in love with her tech-support guy in India (Mandvi).
Mindy Kaling (“The Office”) stars in “House Poor,” a mockumentary about a woman who doesn’t have enough cash to furnish her house.
Steven E. de Souza, writer of “Die Hard,” “48 Hours” and other films, wrote, directed and produced “Unknown Sender,” which stars Timothy Dalton and Joanne Whalley. The fictional series is conceived of as a collection of videos — confessionals, surveillance tapes — that aren’t necessary meant to be distributed.”
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