Youtube.com, Hulu.com and TV.com: It's clear, the only loser is your television set

By now, we all pretty much know about youtube.com, a site where people can create videos and host them for others to see. As someone interested in media production, I found the advent of youtube.com promising and troubling.

Here is a site where people can not only host homemade videos, but also comment on the video content other people host. What's exciting about this concept is the creativity it beckons. Now, anyone with a 'camera and a dream' can get exposure for their creativity. Directors with interesting content can develop a fan base and even get picked up by national production companies.

Obviously, though, this can also lead to countless bad or poorly conceived content, and also piracy. The greatest downside to youtube is how the popularity of bad content spawns more bad content. And more. And more.

Despite the negatives of self-produced internet video, or perhaps as a direct response to it, there is a new trend popping up on the internet: Consumers sidestepping television schedules to watch their favorite nationally-syndicated TV shows on the web.

Hulu.com has become one of the most popular video-hosting sites on the web, thanks largely to studio cooperation from NBC, Fox and their TV production subsidiaries Universal Media Studios and 20th Century Fox Television, respectively.

Other sites, such as TV.com, NBC.com, Fox.com, ABC.com are expanding their video content to give viewers a more complete online viewing experience. Shows such as "Heroes," "House, M.D." and "The Office", to name a few, have official websites where fans can follow 'character blogs', mini-webisodes, and even extended episode outtakes.

The pastime of spending your evening glued to your tv has come and gone. In its place: the sight of children, teens, and adults watching episodes of their favorite show on their computers, while posting complaints and praise for specific episodes to the show's blog. Quality content is now in more demand than ever before, and it's my hope that 2009 will be a year for the consumer, where more quality content is available than ever before!