The most innovation and the largest growth in distribution for video in the modern world has been in the many professional YouTube channels that exist. EpicMealTime, FreddieW, RealAnnoyingOrange, have literally millions or fans that watch every single one of their videos and they are currently making millions of dollars.
All of these companies, either have millions of dollars or have raised millions of dollars. Now they are currently in a land grab for all the top YouTube channels, because if you control the top YouTube channels you control distribution. And currently top YouTubers are some of the only people on the web, that can effectively and consistently distribute to millions of fans.
My point is this, innovative people are already challenging hollywood and are off to a great start. In my opinion, if someone is serious about killing Hollywood they need to first study whats already out there and figure out how to work with the people who have already made some serious progress!
If you want to kill Hollywood, you need to kill its revenue streams. In the case of TV, that would be advertising. The examples you've raised are off to a good start there. Once brands and marketers see that these folks can reach bigger and more dedicated audiences each week than a typical TV show can, dollars will be taken away from TV spend and placed on YouTube instead. It'll be a slow process, but we're already seeing some really big brands and companies placing big bets on YouTube, Facebook, etc. There are plenty of cases where spending on a YouTube star makes more sense than spending on a TV show (when reaching a targeted audience or youth demographics, say). That said, YouTube -- and its associated studios -- have a ways to go before theyr'e taking serious bucks away from TV network advertising.
As for the movie business, that one's a bit tougher to kill. The barriers to entry for Hollywood-quality movies are fairly high. But there are some levers to pull. In recent years, hedge funds have quietly emerged as one of the biggest sources of film financing in the business -- bankrolling everyone from production companies to studios themselves. Independent producers looking to work outside the Hollywood system should find a) distribution paths that make sense, and b) court this sort of money, which will be agnostic as to who's making the content if the content is good enough.
In fact FreddieW has raised over $270K on kick-starter for to create a movie, all donated from his fans http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/freddiew/video-game-high....
Now, beyond just the individual YouTube channel owners, there are currently (start-up) studios that professionally manage and assist YouTube channels (for a cut of course). Some of these start-ups are http://machinima.com/, http://makerstudios.com/, cloudmedia, http://fullscreen.net/ http://www.thecollective-la.com/ http://break.com/
All of these companies, either have millions of dollars or have raised millions of dollars. Now they are currently in a land grab for all the top YouTube channels, because if you control the top YouTube channels you control distribution. And currently top YouTubers are some of the only people on the web, that can effectively and consistently distribute to millions of fans.
My point is this, innovative people are already challenging hollywood and are off to a great start. In my opinion, if someone is serious about killing Hollywood they need to first study whats already out there and figure out how to work with the people who have already made some serious progress!