I hope that wasn't an anticlimactic revelation, because I think it's a big deal. That video playback capability was arguably the tipping point for online video.

It was that playback ability—not to mention the spread of broadband—which led ABC, five months later, to announce that it would sell video on iTunes. And since then, the walls between television and online content have come a-tumblin' down.

Today, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who didn't agree that we're in a whole new era of online media.

Click here to read more about the video iPod as a digital content platform.

Do you remember what online media was like a year ago? For starters, you certainly couldn't download television shows on iTunes. And the major broadcast networks weren't streaming their shows on their own Web sites. Yahoo had just launched its video search site. ABC's VOD (video-on-demand) theater was just a glimmer in Bob Iger's eye. And musty old CBS was rebroadcasting Pope John Paul II's funeral online, complete with user-generated video content. Meanwhile, Hollywood was concerned that an 11-week slump at the box office meant consumers were turning away from theaters. It was a nascent market. Nothing was certain.

But we heard rumblings of great things to come. The Web had already begun to pull ad buyers away from TV. CNN was building a streaming media application. Scripps was planning a broadband niche strategy. The Streaming Media East conference was abuzz with possibility.

In June of 2005, Newsweek ran a story called "The Changing Media Landscape" that took a look at services, like Blinkx, that archive shows from television. The Slingbox also debuted around that time, making it possible to send your television programs to any computer screen. (And making content producers nervous.)

And then there was another small tipping point: Both AOL and ABC streamed coverage of the Live 8 concert. That experiment was such a success that AOL moved forward with a slew of new video-on-demand deals.

As the year came to a close, podcasting seemed to have every broadcaster's ear (and I couldn't get the image of Adam Curry's 80's bouffant out of my head). But the real event on the horizon was the explosion of video.

An explosion not just of content, but of ways to distribute that content. Television shows direct from the Web. Networks cutting out affiliates, then cutting them back in again. The video iPod. YouTube passing CNN in number of page views. The market was booming to the tune of $1.7 billion by 2010.

Leap forward to this week, mid-May 2006, and you see the mediascape has completely changed. ABC now streams four of its most popular television programs online. Though it originally did so without affiliate consent, the network has since begun an experiment with affiliates to share online videos. And just today, May 10, we learned that ABC plans to keep its online VOD theater longer than the original two-month time frame.

CBS, meanwhile, is hot on ABC's heels with its Innertube service. Unlike ABC's theater, Innertube doesn't show full-length television programs. But it does offer a lot of video content, and unique content you can't find anywhere else. CBS exec Larry Kramer said the company has been planning Innertube for a while now, but that the tremendous success of streaming the NCAA tournament for free— 20 million streams served—gave it incentive to redouble its efforts.

Not to be left out, Warner Brothers shook up TV land this week with the first Web syndication deal. It'll be selling online versions of a few shows to local TV stations. and splitting the ad revenue. Warner Brothers also announced that it'll be using BitTorrent to sell movies and TV shows. That may not mean much to tech-savvy downloaders, but it's a step in the right direction for tech-shy studios.

This week also brought the news that Fox, the iTunes tortoise that had been the only network not to race onto Apple's distribution platform, will now be selling episodes through the popular media application.

If all these content possibilities aren't enough to make your head spin, consider that MTV announced this week that it would be producing two different versions of the same show, one for online and one for television. The catch: The shows will air at the same time. Talk about parallel universes of content.

While all this online video would've happened without iTunes video playback capabilities, that little software application played a major role. At the least, it laid the groundwork for mass-market legal downloads. I don't know about you, but I stopped using BitTorrent when I could get better quality for $1.99 a pop.

So it's been a helluva year. Networks and content producers are understanding that online video won't cannibalize their traditional profits. If anything, it improves their content's reach.

I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next.

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