Right to the Top

Newsweek: Young, creative comics are using digital video and the Internet to launch careers—sometimes overnight. "The Net success of "Lazy Sunday" also represents a defining moment for the film and television business. Advances in digital video and broadband have vastly lowered the cost of production and distribution. Filmmakers are now following the path blazed by bloggers and musicians, cheaply creating and uploading their work to the Web. If it appeals to any of the Net's niches, millions of users will pass along their films through e-mail, downloads or links. It's the dawn of the democratization of the TV and film business—even unknown personalities are being propelled by the enthusiasm of their fans into pop-culture prominence, sometimes without even traditional intermediaries like talent agents or film festivals.

Short, funny videos like "Lazy Sunday" happen to translate online, but not everything works as well. Bite-size films are more practical than longer ones; comedy plays better than drama. But almost everything is worth trying, since the tools to create and post video are now so cheap, and ad hoc audiences can form around any sensibility, however eccentric.

It has also allowed Sanjay Shah, 28, and his friends to find an audience unserved by traditional TV. For the last few years, their weekly South Asian-themed animations—like an Indian spoof of "The Simpsons" 's opening theme—have drawn millions of visitors to his site, Badmash.org. "I look at the Internet right now as the incubator, the RD department for traditional channels," Shah says. Their success has led to consulting work for MTV, New Line Cinema and Sony.

All this rich opportunity for young creators poses a formidable challenge to established Hollywood players. If watching video on the Internet becomes as easy and visually satisfying as watching television, consumers won't need traditional distribution networks like cable and satellite. That possibility is forcing the networks to think differently. ABC's and NBC's three-month-old relationships with Apple, to put shows like "Lost" and "The Office" on iTunes, were a start. According to "SNL" 's Michaels, NBC will soon put new and classic "Saturday Night Live" clips for sale on iTunes. "The one thing the Internet suffers from is that there's very little editorial control over quality," Michaels says.

As "Lazy Sunday" showed, there's certainly an audience. But "SNL" will be competing with an almost limitless universe of user-generated creativity, uploaded by young filmmakers with little respect for old notions about what's possible. On the Internet, no one knows or cares if you're ready for prime time." Just. Do. It.