trackingb.com in the "Los Angeles Times"

Our friends over at www.trackingb.com, the industry insider tracking site now available to screenwriters (see blog item below) got a nice little write-up in Jay Fernandez' Scriptland column in the "Los Angeles Times."

TrackingB.com, a growing pay website that tracks insider maneuverings and the real-time sale and buzz of new pitches and screenplays, (is) kind of bank vault to which anyone can buy the combination for $69 a year.

TrackingB.com is owned and run by the Insider, the nom de Web of Adam (who withheld his last name) who launched the site last October. It's meant to act as a common area for writers and their representatives and the development executives at studios and production companies who want to know what material they're circulating -- or about to circulate -- in the marketplace.

"I'm mostly using it to look out for: What are the new specs that are going out on the market, what's happening with the ones that are already out there?" says Fox Searchlight creative executive Jason Hargrove, who checks the site daily and nabbed a script called "Near Death," written by Carter Blanchard, this year because TrackingB.com reported on it three days before it went on the market.

Although development execs have long had their own versions of invitation-only tracking boards, where they swap thoughts on writers, agencies and screenplays, the agents themselves have rarely been directly privy to the chatter.

In addition to insider gossip, TrackingB.com also gives them an opportunity to see what their rivals are going out with and what's generating positive heat.

It also, of course, allows them to plant artificial buzz, which could dilute a script's potency if it's thought that an agent is merely hyping his own client's work.

At the moment, the site's subscribers are drawn mainly from junior creative executives and VPs at studios, as well as lower-level assistants, managers, agents, financiers and producers, although the William Morris Agency has an account and at least one production head at a major studio uses it.

"I always felt out of the loop when my work went out and hit the town," says Adam. "I felt like I was always one step removed from everything. So I wanted to create something where not only insiders could learn about the industry but people who were on the fringes of it could find a way to get more in the middle."

Check out trackingb.com HERE.