As we go into second month of writers strike, think of William. After all, none of the scriveners picketing now at Hollywood studios’ gates demanding revenues due to them in the “New Media” – internet downloads, cable access, downloads to mobiles, etc – thought of him, nor could they have imagined his astonishing if serendipitous trajectory. Hence the irony: the New Media in which “reality” seems to play such a key role is gaining more money, and eyeballs, because of protesting writers and, therefore, TV reruns – and thanks in large part to real rawness and surprising resilience of the likes of William Hung. With no writers, an onslaught of reality shows are being scheduled for January. Fox will offer The Moment of Truth, something that mirrors Guantanamo. In it contestants are strapped to a lie detector and asked about their most intimate secrets, without, mercifully, waterboarding. American Gladiators are also back and that show is self explanatory, (though I might add, very a propos to America’s late roman period). Then there’s Oprah’s Big Five, an ABC show sponsored by Oprah Winfrey in which contestants are to give away a lot of money for the greatest benefit of society. Next season, it seems now certain, will be the beginning of the non-fiction era of Hollywood, where documentary and “real” personalities, rule the airwaves.

Thus minorities, in many ways, should rejoice. People of color gain strong foothold in term of representation in the New Media. Reality TV - American Idol and Survivor top among them – is the programming genre in which real demographic is more fairly integrated. Consider too: Characters of colors don’t just get on reality TV shows, many actually win them. Jun Song won Big Brother, Vecepita Towery and Yul Kwon won Survivor, Harlemm Lee won Fame, Ruben Studdard and Fantasia Barrino won American Idol. Asians, traditionally excluded in Hollywood, in fact, are winning quite a bit considering being a small population in the US. Vietnamese alone counted for four. Chloe Dao sewed her way to the top in Project Runway, there’s also Hung Huynh, who won on Top Chef, using fishsauce as the base ingredient. Last Comic Standing got Dat Phan, a Vietnamese American who made fun of, what else, his mother’s accent.

Last but not least, there’s also A shot of Love with Tila Tequila – originally Tila Nguyen, born in Singapore to refugee parents from Vietnam. Tila didn’t exactly win but being the queen of MySpace who purportedly got million friends and a bisexual to boot, Tila got notice. And on MTV she wants love. Writers can’t come up with a line like this: "I was really confused then, 'cause at first I thought I was black, then I thought I was Hispanic and joined a cholo gang.” About the MTV gig, she said: “This show's the perfect experience because it's really going to help me figure out -- do I really like a guy or do I really like a girl.”

What to make of a bisexual, Vietnamese, ex-gang banger, immigrant looking for love as the main character on TV? Reality is indeed far stranger than tired sitcoms, and it says the future, at least where the writers of Hollywood are concerned, is not bright. Because for so long, TV writers failed to conceive the likes of William Hung and Tila Tequila that these reality’s children invented themselves instead. Their rawness, their openness, sans superficiality, their complexity are beyond anything imagined. And these New Media personalities are giving old Hollywood a run for its money. They are creating a kind of post-modern horizontal conversation that can often be raw and messy and raunchy, but full of surprises and always fascinating. As the writers strike goes on (and barely makes a difference in anyone’s life outside Hollywood), it strikes this writer at least that, though it may not be the end of imagination, it’s the end of something, and it might very well be that of the traditional entertainment business as we know it.