• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, February 23, 2006

In late January, MTV and Comedy Central made dozens of hits available on Apple's iTunes Music Store; the executive behind "Da Ali G Show" and "Trading Spaces" became the head of programming at Match.com and AskJeeves; and IBM, the former PC hardware kingpin, declared "the end of television as we know it."

Only a few months ago, it would have been an extraordinary day in the media business with cable networks seemingly cannibalizing their own ratings, leading Web destinations pursuing top-notch TV content, and the bluest of blue chips warning about radical change. Yet for the television world, it was just another day at the office (or "The Office"). Even before New Year's revelers sobered up, television had already changed forever. After years of hoping that some technologies would simply go away, the industry suddenly embraced them.

In rapid succession, ABC made "Desperate Housewives" available on iTunes; NBC followed with "The Office"; CBS offered up "CSI" for the Google Video Store and video-on-demand; and Nielsen began including digital video recorder viewing in its ratings. Meanwhile, AOL will become a "television" programmer with In2TV by launching six channels of vintage shows from the Warner Bros. library including drama, comedy, and cartoons.

The on-demand mediaverse is no longer about the future; the nonlinear media world is here today. The IBM Institute for Business Value described the phenomenon as "platform-agnostic content" that signals "an end to the traditional concept of release windows."

Of all media, television is the easiest to reimagine in a nonlinear way. Consider that it's now possible for a commuter to watch "Lost" on a video iPod on the subway; to access "Survivor" at the Google Video Store during lunch; to snack on a "Welcome Back, Kotter" episode on AOL's In2TV during an afternoon respite; to sample "Jimmy Kimmel" clips on a cell phone while heading home; to take in two hours of "Gilmore Girls" commercial-free on TiVo in the early evening (saving a total of 32 minutes); and still manage to catch the "American Idol" results show live. There's even some thought that the various media consumption platforms are spurring usage patterns in others. In fact, NBC attributed ratings growth for "The Office" on TV to viewer sampling on video iPods.

With the torrent of nonlinear TV news in January, MTV's "Laguna Beach" and Comedy Central's "South Park" joined the lineup on iTunes. Also, get ready for Barry Diller to return to television programming, though this time with IPTV. Diller's InterActiveCorp hired Michael Jackson, the British whiz responsible for "Ali G" and "Trading Spaces," to serve as president of programming. Diller might stream romantic comedies on Match.com and action dramas via AskJeeves. And don't look for any slowdown in the rush to experiment with new platforms; the IBM report projects major upheaval thanks to demand for "anytime, anywhere" content.

Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research and Larry Gerbrandt of Nielsen Analytics both caution that fully nonlinear programming is still a long way off. "Everyone has decided that scheduled TV is done. It's just overexaggerated," Bernoff says. For his part, Gerbrandt maintains, "There are many forms of programming that still work best when scheduled, such as sports, certain kinds of news shows, talk shows, and reality shows."

So-called "live" shows will continue to command premium ad rates since they are "TiVo-proof." But shows with heavy on-demand use might require some innovation to keep ad revenues flowing, perhaps in the form of more sophisticated product placement.

In the near term, TV consumption will likely be broken into two sub-groups: older-skewing, predominantly "live" viewers, and younger, "tech- and fashion-forward" (as defined by IBM) individuals who surf between the TV screen, laptop, cell phone, and iPod. The latter will look for ways to move their content. "Not only will all the content available be delivered to these independent devices, but they'll be connected," says Mike Vorhaus of Frank N. Magid Associates.

Another forecaster, Mike Liebhold of the Institute for the Future, says portable game players could become key: "People will begin to have high-resolution, interactive, cinema-like experiences with their game box." If that's true, watch for ABC, Google, and other key players to follow consumers there. That wouldn't have been the case six months ago.