For many years, there has been talk of how the medium of television would bleed into computers and the internet until television as we know it did not exist.  Everything would be on the internet.  No more networks, no more cable TV, just the internet and a plethora of entertainment choices.  There has been some advancement towards this; some productions are released only to the web.

Now, however, things have gone the other way, after a fashion.  A creative woman named Felicia Day created a web series called The Guild.  Although squarely aimed at a niche audience–folks like myself who play EverQuest or others who play WoW–the series gained a fairly large following.  A sequel “season” was produced and made available in places outside of the ubiquitous YouTube.  Now there are four seasons out there, and three of them are available for instant play on NetFlix.  The video giant makes their instant videos available through several devices, such as the Wii, and there’s been talk of a Netflix set-top box.  So something from the web has now bled into television.  Not exactly cable or broadcast, but at least part of the on-demand market.

This is likely not the last such occurrence.  There’s been plenty of instances of TV shows on the web–every episode of South Park, for example–and sooner or later some webisode thing will end up on cable or even broadcast.  Some of these webisode things are truly well done, as The Guild demonstrates.  Sure, the production quality of The Guild‘s first season isn’t quite on par with most regular TV shows, but it did well on the limited budget it had.  The actors were clearly professionals and passionate about their work.  I look forward to a sitcom with broader appeal being produced.

The way I see it, television isn’t really going anywhere.  It’s like cassette tapes:  Doom predicted for a couple of decades now, but it just hasn’t happened.  Television, both broadcast and cable, will find an audience for a long time.  The networks and local stations have ventured into cyberspace, making sure to present sufficient material there to keep audiences interested and aware of their presence.  The smart ones will look for series like The Guild and bring them into a bigger audience.  Technology bleeds both ways.