Been watching the TV show Lost off Bittorrent. It's really something of a step up for the network television apparatus, must cost a fortune to make. I believe it's quite successful though, so that's good. That means more people will try to do things that are of the same level of quality. Perhaps an upmarket analogue for a lot of the same trends that are driving reality tv? Well, at the very least a evolutionary step in terms of format (rigidly serial), production values (the lush settings and intelligent plot), and business plan (the decision to release DVDs immediately).

One thing I think that will come out soon will be TV shows of this nature ceeding the rights to syndication in favor of releasing DVDs right away, perhaps even breaking down the traditional year-long "season" into smaller "chapters". For instance I got Lost Episodes 1 - 7 in one torrent, a summary of sorts, and if it had stopped at #5, which had a cliff-hanger ending, it would have made a great end-point for a DVD collection. If one of those came out every other month it could serve both to sustain interest, but grow popularity by allowing people to more easily join the show in-progress.

Of course, the mother of all distribution methods is on-demand, which is essentially the corporate version of what I do right now. It looks like the cable giants are going to have the early market locked up, and they're going to keep charging way too much money to actually compete with their main markets. On the other hand, it's going to be increasingly feasible for independent or maverick producers to control how their content is released, which should eventually put on pressure to lower prices, or even create "premium television" subscriptions. The really interesting questions is what advertisers do?

Oh, and I think the budding love-quadrangle between the Doctor and the cop and the criminal and the con-man is pretty exciting.