LA Daily News - Will ON DEMAND kill the supply of prime-time TV?

We are in a time of technological shift which I embrace. TV is a powerful medium consumed by most everyone. Part of its power has not just been its content, but the ability to control our lives because of the content. The paradigm has always been that in order to partake of content, you needed to schedule to be available at a certain time. For a lot of us, that changed in the 80's with the advent of the VCR. In a primitive and very analog way, we time-shifted our programming to a more convenient hour. But most people couldn't program their VCR appropriately so it never broke a hold that scheduling had on our lives. But now that's changing.

DVR's have made time-shifting easier. On-demand programming has made recording scheduled programming unnecessary. And now downloadable content like TV from Apple's iTunes breaks the slavery to the paradigm of the past.

I've been waiting for this shift. Are there other ramifications due to this change...like more TV watching instead of less? I'm sure. But I already control how much I watch and with technology, when I watch. This last element has influenced our social interactions and culture at large. Now due to technological advances, that hold that the TV schedule has had on our lives is crumbling. I agree it may be a while before those bonds are completely broken but anything to speed us to that day of freedom is welcome.