These days, Internet companies have the cash to back up their visions. Advertisers from Hollywood to Madison Avenue are expected to spend more than $11 billion on online marketing this year, with an increasingly large portion coming from video-based ads that resemble TV spots.

Yahoo, which turned an $840-million profit last year thanks to the Internet ad resurgence, can now afford to experiment with new kinds of programming.

So if you're sitting on that great script for a defense version of Law & Order, or a comedy about life in a minimum security club fed, send it to Yahoo. It may not make NBC, but it could end up on the Internet.

Update: Internet radio also is making a comeback, with companies searching for original material.

Clear Channel, which dropped its Internet-only division in 2001, recently said it would be getting back into the business of producing original radio content for the Web.

Anyone care to write a script for a present-day Dick Tracy?