I am, for the most part, going to ignore the comments to my latest post, because they were, for the most part, harmless and ill worded (it's your, not you're, and "grammar" is spelled with an "a", not an "e"), but I would like to provide this helpful bit of advice:That being said, I'd like to speak on something that is very important to me: House, M.D. Specifically, House, M.D., and its lack of appearance on youtube. Look, I can only take so many House/Wilson slash videos before my head just spins in circles.

I don't quite understand the copyright issue with taking House off youtube. No, I don't want anyone making money off posting the latest episode the minute it's done airing; (dammit, if I can't make money that way, no one will!) but is it really all that different if I tape it on VHS and hold it to my bosom in a decidedly-greedy fashion? Or what if I was really rich (and geeky) and TiVo'd it, and then took that TiVo and copied the hard drive? Either way, I would still have my very own copy of Gregory House being snarky, and I wouldn't have to pay a cent...kinda like I don't now when I watch it on my six-inch TV screen.

I think that Clear Channel needs to get with the time. Fox, Time Warner, every dinosaur company is fighting tooth and nail to keep their footage in the reels, and that's not how people are watching TV anymore. Very rarely do I make time to watch an entire TV show; I catch it on the run in five minute increments like everyone else. That's why independent stations like CurrentTV are such a blessing. (Thank you, Lord Al Gore. I will spread your Good Message...)

Wired Magazine (the know-all-be-all, in my book) had this to say:

Until about five minutes ago, remember, almost all video-entertainment content was produced and distributed by Hollywood. Period. That time is over. There was a time when advertisers could count on mass audiences for what Hollywood thought we should be watching on TV. That time is all but over. There was a time when broadband penetration was too slight and bandwidth costs too prohibitive for video to be watched online. That time is sooooo over. "The era of the creepy blue light leaking out of every living room window on the block is now officially at an end," says my pal and occasional colleague Steve Rosenbaum, founder of video-sharing startup Magnify.net and one of the inventors a decade ago of citizen video. "The simple, wonderful, delirious fact is that people like you and me can now make and share content."

Without being overly simplistic or melodramatic, the state of the Old Commercial Broadcasting Model can be summarized like this: a spiraling vortex of ruin. Fragmentation has decimated audiences, viewers who do watch are skipping commercials, advertisers are therefore fleeing, the revenue for underwriting new content is therefore flatlining, program quality is therefore suffering (Dancing With the Stars. QED), which will lead to ever more viewer defection, which will lead to ever more advertiser defection, and so on.

Well, that settles it.

Also, a question. Was an actual order put out to fly flags at half-mast? I'm getting mixed signals from my people...