This is one of those things I suspect I shouldn't be writing down in public, but I'm so frustrated that something's gotta give, so here goes. At some point in the future, I may try to sell my consulting services for $10,000 an hour or some other ludicrous amount, but I'm giving my handful of loyal readers some freebies right here.

If you're associated with a media company, the first thing you should do is either take your company completely private or create some kind of private subsidiary, some sheltered subdivision that's allowed to grow a pair of testicles. What we're seeing, over and over and over again, is the rampant gutting of experimentation and ambition by lily-livered coward investors. Anything that's too experimental, too far out-there, is immediately deemed too big of a risk and is shunned. Newsflash: 90% of everything of crap, and 95% of all experiments fail – but it's the 5% that don't that enable man to discover fire. Breakthroughs come from risk, from crazy ideas.

Tonight in our living room, while watching House, Ivan and Alec and I got into a big, loud debate over whether or not the show could survive if Dr. Gregory House were to go to prison and the show followed his potential exploits working as a doctor inside the prison, or if he were forced to change hospitals. If the entire rest of the cast were stripped away, if the sets were changed, if the formulas changed, if everything changed except for Hugh Laurie and his title character, if the show followed House on to the next stage of his life, what would happen? I felt very strongly that the show could conceivably succeed and even flourish from receiving such a huge new shot of creativity. Ivan and Alec, on the other hand, proceeded to insist that there was no way the studio system would ever go for such a radical change, and that the closest thing we'd seen so far was the miserable flop that was Joey. I still think that they're wrong, that if done properly such an experiment would absolutely work – but I'm afraid they're right about the studios never going for it, since it would be deemed as too big a risk. The more creative execs might go for it, but the shareholders would probably scream their heads off and wring their worried little hands as they simpered and whimpered about how the studio was taking such horrible gambles with their money. If it worked, though, it would revitalize a waning franchise and potentially lead to many more years of solid profits – but without the cojones to take the risk, no one will ever know.

The second thing you creative industry types should do is stop thinking about success only in terms of great heaping sacks of money. I'm becoming more and more interested in telling stories on the Web and in comics because, since they have such lower overhead, they're more open to experimental forms and stories. I have some Ideas that I want to try and develop, some concepts about new media forms and the resulting narrative structures, but to do so I need some development capital and some time. I don't expect them to make a ton of money – in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they lost a little money – but if it made a profit at all, or if there was some serious learning involved from the experiment, then I'd consider them to be rollicking successes. Now, I'm not going to say that I wouldn't want to be rich – sure I would – but there's a problem in the creative industries when producers start to say, "sure, this could make a million bucks – but I'm not looking to only make a million bucks." (Which I've heard repeatedly.) The world is full of decent storytellers who would love the chance to just get their stuff out there, and for whom a million clams is a lot of money. As far as I'm concerned, as long as the stuff I come up with enables me to buy a house and some land, equip my family with cars and clothes, and put my kids through college (and eventually enable me to retire), that's points.

The Web is a beautiful thing. Not only does it provide a low-cost distribution method for all kinds of neat experiments, but it enables would-be storytellers to work in a number of various media. We're already seeing this kind of grassroots media development emerge in the form of the independent games movement, following in the footsteps of independent film and independent comics – each of which serve as a breeding pool for the next wave of mass media superstars, and the whole lot of which is embracing the Web in a huge way. I think the Web is also the secret to successful transmedia storytelling, and I think transmedia storytelling is the next step in narrative experiments. We're already seeing how the world is ready and willing to embrace narrative complexity in new narrative forms like Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) and uber-complex shows like LOST; there is space in the landscape for stories told across multiple media forms by passionate storytellers eager to embrace the myriad of features that are offered by using multiple media types, not just one. The term 'multimedia' will be redefined. Audiences intrigued by the new narrative form will check it out, just to see how such a thing would work – and if the story's good enough, they'll stick around. Maybe it'll require some high-profile name to bring enough of an audience to try such a crazy thing – but maybe not. Maybe, if the overhead is low enough, such a crazy thing would support itself. It wouldn't make piles and piles of money, no, not right out of the gate – but that would be okay, since it would either be published independently or by a publisher with the balls to attempt something like this. One way or the other, it would serve as a noble experiment and inform whatever comes next.

I'm tired of pretentious, condescending naysayers with no imagination pooh-poohing new ideas, especially when we're supposed to be at the forefront of the people exploring what's new and what's possible. I'm tired of people saying things like "I'm not saying it's not how it should work..." because they're too limited in their vision to try and hash out how it could work. Where are the dreamers? Where are the idealists? Where are the goddamn visionaries?

I'm encouraged by comics. I'm encouraged by niche television that wants to take risks, like HBO and FX. I'm encouraged by indie film. I'm encouraged by the Web. I'm encouraged by people who want to try new stuff, who are driven by curiosity and ambition, not by fear or greed. It's so easy to say why something could never work – but it's so much more fulfilling to hash out ways that it could. That's what I'm good at, and those are the kinds of people I'm looking for.

Grow an imagination, people. And then grow some fucking balls.