Litvack is a litigator first and foremost, says John Shenefield, the former head of the DOJ's antitrust unit who first hired Litvack in 1980. "He liked to litigate. He liked the rough and tumble, whereas some people who had served in that position liked to dot all the Is and cross all the Ts," Shenefield told CNET. "During a Christmas party, there was a skit and the person playing Sandy said, 'Fundamentally, I'm a litigator,' and everyone in the room knew exactly what he meant," another DOJ source said.

Some say Litvack likes to go to court too much, even when the laws he's prosecuting don't make sense. Along with being credited with building the case that broke up AT&T, Litvack is also known for prosecuting laws that, according to CNET, forbade "a manufacturer to have an agreement with a reseller that prohibited them from reselling a product at a higher or lower price than expressly stated in the contract." The Supreme Court eventually decided such laws were themselves anticompetitive and struck them down.

Yahoo's Santa Monica campus, which was built under Semel and Braun's tenure is now a News Corp. outpost, and while BermanBraun signed Web content deals last summer, I've yet to see as much as a press release from the pair since. Microsoft can be forgiven for biting on Michael Eisner's pitch hook, line and sinker, but struggling Yahoo should really know better. (Photo by Getty/Jean-Paul Aussenard)

It's a very small piece of their business, there are so many other things that are so important — search and other things. If they stay like that for another decade, I probably will have a big advantage in building a big company.

Aside from providing us with some entertaining viral videos, the strike had no impact on the business of tech. TV ratings, even on programs produced before the strike, continue to plummet; there's no reason to expect them to pick up after the writers return to work. One sure loser: Venture capitalist who fancied themselves the new media moguls. As rapacious as Hollywood bosses are, they surely take less of their servants' work than Sand Hill Road. Like Eisner himself, these wannabe studio chiefs are left with only the purest fantasies of being a player.

And then there's the person advancing the project: Mark Welte, a San Francisco-based copywriter whose achievements, if you can call them that, include naming Nokia's ill-fated N-Gage handheld videogame player. Welte offered me a finder's fee, which I'm afraid I must decline: I'll take my payment in publishing this post and learning what becomes of this odd quest. Welte's email:

Dear Mr. Thomas,

As you're at the epicenter of what makes life in Silicon Valley somuch fun—i.e. the people—I wonder if I might enlist a smidge of truly insightful help from you.

I'm an adopted San Franciscan, working in advertising, making a transition into the film business. My partners in LA and I have a slate of films, offers to finance, two options and three original properties, and a true team of talent, and we're ready to start making movies. We have a unique investment plan for a prospective cash-flowing-partner, one in which our deep-pocketed partner's funds are well protected by government-backed tax breaks and similar vehicles, and we're looking for $4.5MM to get the ball rolling (about a tenth of the money is for development, and the remainder is for a portion of the production, thereby earning us leverage for the back end participation.)

Surely someone in your position knows of some mad money character or two in the Valley who has an interest in Hollywood, and would love to see their name on the big screen as an Executive Producer. If you can be of any assistance in our search, it would be greatly appreciated, and we would reward you with a finder's fee if such a cash flowing partner could be signed.

We're interested in individuals or a small group of investors, only. I have a business plan to share with interested parties. The first film is an adaptation of Pulitzer Prize-winning author James B. Stewart's book, Disney War: it's about Michael Eisner.

Thank you for your time. I look forward to hearing from you.

Mark Welte
Hainan Productions

No wonder Disney wanted a sequel made, with or without Pixar. (The companies' contract gave Disney the right to do sequels.) Previously, the Pixar-produced Toy Story 2 had grossed $486 million. Though not without an infant's brush with death. In The Pixar Touch, author David Price explains that a harsh deadline imposed on the filmmakers lead to all kinds of trouble and even a near fatality:

The situation came to a head when an overstressed and overtired animator set off to work with his infant child, having agreed with his wife that he would drop the baby off at day care that morning. When he spoke with his wife later that day, she casually asked how the drop-off had gone — and he realized only then that he had, in his mental haze, completely forgotten.

The baby was still in the back seat of his car in the parking lot. Although quick action by rescue workers headed off the worst, the incident became a horrible indicator that some on the crew were working too hard.

That's nothing to sneeze at, but Quarterlife has been touted as the "first television-quality production for the Web," and 100,000 viewers would mean instant cancellation on broadcast TV. TV-level production values plus Internet-size audiences is a recipe for financial disaster.

But the real draw of YouTube isn't that the content is short; it's that it's easy to find and share. YouTube only implemented a 10-minute limit in an attempt to slow the flow of copyrighted content; users got around it by breaking up longer shows into 10-minute chunks. Plenty of people watch full-length shows online; indeed, that's one of the supposed draws of Hulu, NBC and News Corp.'s video joint venture.

The numbers are compelling. The number of people snagging free content off Pirate Bay has doubled to 8 million in the past year. According to SumoTorrent tracker, 50 percent of BitTorrent traffic is devoted to downloading television shows. And the audience viewing TV shows online is 25 percent more engaged with the show their couch-sitting counterparts.

The lesson: Web users can stomach full-length episodes. There's no reason to chop up narratives into bits for the sake of online attention spans. No, the real quandary is finding a big enough of an audience to support broadcast production values. Doing things the old way doesn't work: Eisner, the former Disney CEO, lost buckets of money on his "hit" Prom Queen, claiming it cost him $3,000 for every 90 seconds of footage.

"I can't tell you how many propositions I get, it's absolutely insane," the now-married Calacanis told the Observer in 2000. "My life is surreal. I'm not used to women liking me," he said. But the 29-year old saw through these women. "It's depressing to think they like me for my Rolodex, or for what I can do for their dotcom." So instead, Calacanis put love aside and focused on a goal even we'll admit he's achieved.

"There's no reason why I can't be the next Michael Eisner," Calacanis told the paper. "Somebody has to be." Well, when you wish upon a star, Jason, it makes no difference who you are. And we feel very comfortable saying you are exactly the same kind of Web 2.0 guru as Michael Eisner.

(Photo by hyku)

Indeed, failure seems to follow him. It did when interviewer Deborah Soloman asked him to explain the name of his production company Vuguru. She said:

"To me it sounds like a drug, like Vioxx or Viagra.

If it reminds you of something that creates new strength, I guess that's O.K. In French, vous is second-person plural. Vuguru — you are the guru of viewing. It was just a made-up word.

What BusinessWeek should have focused on is Eisner's attempt to ride the MySpace wave with his Web-only production company Vuguru. Its first show, Prom Queen, which was distributed over the social network, is considered a mild success — landing sponsors like the Hairspray remake, Verizon, and Elle Girl. What would make sense is the exact opposite of what BusinessWeek proposes. Instead of ransacking trading-card licensees for online-video ideas, Eisner should think about using Topps to print trading cards for the MySpace set. We can't wait to see the Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe cards.