From the Sept. 10 NYT:

In the race to become a major supplier of original video programming to the Web, Warner Brothers has decided to reverse its direction.

The studio, part of Time Warner, plans today to introduce 24 Web productions in a range of formats including minimovies, games and episodic television shows.

But for this latest online push, Warner Brothers has discarded its initial strategy of insisting that advertisers shoulder production costs from the start. Instead, it has decided to finance most projects itself and worry about lining up advertisers to recoup costs later.

“In trying to get the business off the ground,” said Craig Hunegs, executive vice president for business development, “we ended up in a bit of a dance with advertisers about what various projects would look like.”

The shift underlines a growing realization among the big Hollywood studios: Web entertainment is evolving so quickly that they must take on more financial risk to keep up.