Content is king, but only when you can enforce wildly profitable distribution rackets like "windowed" releases in different formats over time and in different places. But new media makers shouldn't be too gloomy — the courts of absolutist rulers always get the most wildly decadent just before heads roll. And then the new media Jacobins will need your propaganda just as much as the aristocracy ever did, if not more, but they'll demand a more ascetic approach.

The good news is that margins on the digital distribution business are insane compared to packaged and printed matter, and the margins on packaged and printed matter will only get better when you can sell it for a premium to a discerning clientele. Investors will move their money away from the publicly traded entertainers — it's been another record year for private equity, and digital-distribution enablers like Google and Apple are doing fine, thanks.

It's just a matter of changing the words to your tune to sing the praises of the new gatekeepers. Where you once might have had to kowtow to Sumner Redstone's minions, now it will be the likes of USC Film MFA David Siminoff, who signed up with Venrock instead of one of the major studios and will be the first to tell you he understands the "literature of what sites do."

AT&T exec Susan Johnson said she hopes the fund will focus on "mobile opportunities." Siminoff told the Times the historical friction between Los Angeles and SIlicon Valley won't be a problem. "The ethos of this fund is about reducing the friction," he said. "Hollywood people are not stupid. They are just not technology people." That line of argument will be a tough sell in the Valley.