• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, July 26, 2005

This morning, when the space shuttle Discovery launched at 10:39, viewers didn't need to park themselves in front of a TV screen to watch the liftoff. Instead, anyone with a high-speed Internet connection -- presumably, most of the office-based workforce -- could stream footage of the launch live.

In that sense, the Internet has made inroads towards replacing TV and radio. At The Minute's office, at least, people were glued to the computer to watch the takeoff, and then watch it again, on demand.

Coverage on the Internet appeared to be both broader and deeper than on TV, where the networks tend to show the same footage, interspersed with comments from talking heads.

America Online, for instance, had video footage not just of the liftoff, but also had streams from inside the control room, as well as other locales. In addition, AOL offered on-demand footage of the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing.

MSN, which ran Benadryl ads alongside its coverage this morning, was able to leverage its TV connections for the launch with interviews from MSNBC and video footage from NBC.

At Yahoo!, footage came from NASA TV, while news coverage was provided by the Associated Press. Yahoo! also provided a slide show of more than 300 still photos.

While the coverage was impressive, there were missteps. AOL posted a blog related to the space shuttle, written by the director of AOL News, a self-described "unabashed fan of space exploration." But tone was far too earnest for the blogosphere. "I woke up to good news this morning," is how today's posts began.

Still, all in all, an event like this morning's launch highlights the power of the Web like few other live events have done so far.