Remember how the writers’ strike was forcing people to shut off their TVs and turn to their Web browsers? Think again: Nielsen says video viewership actually dropped 5% from December (6.2 billion streams) to January (5.9 billion). Not surprising, then, that YouTube, the dominant purveyor of Web video, also slipped from 2.64 billion streams in December to 2.57 billion in January. Unique viewers at YouTube were also down slightly from 67.2 million to 66.2 million in January. But YouTube kept its 42% market share of total streams.

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Out of work and newly wise to the state of content being distributed online, a group of professional writers is looking to start their own production and distribution company. Aaron Mendelsohn, writer of the Disney film “Air Bud” and an active Writers Guild of America member, is captaining the efforts, and says he has gotten a group of “A-list” film and TV writers on the team. He’s also partnering with online community experts from Silicon Valley and raising “north of $30 million” in venture capital, with the idea of launching a company called Virtual Artists later this year.

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