(Part 1 of 5)

It seems like every year at about this time, when everyone is making their big "tech" predictions for next year, someone always says that next year is going to be the year for TV on the internet. While it may not yet be a perfect system, or exactly as we all had expected it to be, whoever predicted that statement last December would be right on the money; 2005 will definitely go down as the year that TV came to the internet. The networks seemed to realize, throughout the year, that this internet thing wasn't going to go away anytime soon, and they ought to go ahead and embrace it. Tie-ins ranging from recaps and commentaries, to downloadable specials and entire episodes, to live tie-ins with game shows started popping up all over the web. And let me tell you, if you think that 2005 was big, wait 'til 2006 -- you ain't seen nothing yet. (Yes I know that's grammatically incorrect, it's from a song people!) On with the show!
Here's a roundup and quick recap of just some of the stories involving the merger of these two mediums over the course of the past year.

Early in the year, Battlestar Galactica re-inventor Ronald D Moore started producing podcasts that synced up with the episodes of the show, that would provide a "commentary," ala a DVD's, when watched and listened to at the same time. They became wildly popular and added another layer to the fans enjoyment of the brilliant show. The format worked so well, that we here at TV Squad actually use the method to do our Lost podcasts, and we will be adding more in the same vein this upcoming year. Later in the year (ok, it was yesterday), iTunes offered a recap of the show thus far for free in their music store.

Deal or No Deal, which premiered only last week, became a huge sensation on-line by allowing home users to guess which suitcase the money was in. They gave away $150,000 over the course of the show, yet got millions of hits on their site because of the promotion.

With the 900lb gorilla that was the iTunes video store's debut (don't worry, I'm getting to it), many of the networks scrambled to get their content available on-line one way or the other. Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon made a deal with Hasbro, so episodes of Rugrats, Spongebob Squarepants and Unfabulous appeared on Hasbro's download site for it's portable media player, the VuGo. Fox's acquisition of MySpace gave them a venue, viewed by millions, for them to distribute content on, and quickly announced they would be producing episodes of Family Guy solely for the MySpace community. AOL/Time Warner (who should have had their act together years ago regarding this) announced that classic Time Warner shows would be available on AOL shortly.

Finally, quite possibly the most important TV news to come out this year, Apple unveiled both a video capable iPod and TV shows available for download through their music store, both on the same day. Although they initially launched with only a few shows from ABC, we speculated and asked what you would like to see next from the store, and ABC quickly added more shows. Although the quality wasn't quite hi-def, it was sufficient enough to watch on a PC and looked amazing on the new iPod (or PSP). Like Family Guy's salvation through DVD releases and sales, Night Stalker had a resurrection of sorts when an unaired episode was released exclusively on iTunes. After it's success there, Night Stalker was picked up by the Sci Fi channel. Steve Jobs was busy in the background though, as iTunes added not only NBC, but it's sister channels Sci Fi and USA, bringing quality shows such as Battlestar Galactica, Knight Rider and Monk to the fray. It's only a matter of time until you see Richard Hatch's naked ass on your iPod. I'm talking about the one from Survivor, not Battlestar Galactica by the way. I'd be willing to bet that we see CBS join the music store by the end of the first quarter next year.

So there you have it, part one of our Top Five TV Stories of the Year: TV on the Internet. What will next year hold for this pairing so epic only peanut butter and chocolate rival it? Only time will tell, but I think this year was just the tip of the iceberg. Let me know what you think.