As I look back at the posts TV Squad did this year, a certain topic popped up quite a bit: "Hey, folks, take a look at [Name of big star] in this [funny/quirky/dramatic] web series you can only find at [Name of web site]!" While the quality of and star power behind web-exclusive programming has been building for a couple of years now, 2008 saw an explosion of web series that attracted enough buzz to make one wonder if Jeff Zucker wasn't thinking of this a little bit when he offered Jay Leno the 10:00 slot on NBC.

What caused this explosion? Well, we can thank one of 2008's other big stories -- the writers' strike -- for a lot of it.

Fourteen million. That's not the number of dollars that are being lost in the stock market every second (I'm sure it's much, much more). It's actually the number of views that Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy reached during three weeks on the Interweb. Now, if he only got those numbers during the initial run of Family Guy on FOX.

To those that are totally lost because you've been staring at your 401K numbers for the last month, Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy launched on YouTube on September 10th. Sponsored by Burger King, it featured original animated content from Seth MacFarlane and his gang of miscreants. In a press release from Media Rights Capital, Cavalcade became the number one most-viewed channel on the video website a mere 48 hours after its launch. Since then, it has garnered not only the 14 million views mentioned above but 100,000 subscribers to the 'sethcomedy' channel. Making it one of the most subscribed YouTube channels of all time.

For years Seth MacFarlane has worked in the small animated universe that contains Family Guy, American Dad and soon The Cleveland Show (with some wading in the Robot Chicken pool). During that time he has provided voice and picture to the trials and tribulations of two typical American families. Yet, deep down inside, you knew that he wanted to do more than work with the Griffins and the Smiths. You could see it with in the amount of fantasy sequences placed during a typical episode of Family Guy.

Now, thanks to a combination of Internet and fast food, Seth is getting his chance to explore the world outside of his FOX Sunday night offerings. YouTube -- the dusty video cabinet of the World Wide Web -- will be hosting all new MacFarlane cartoon shorts under the short title Set MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy. Sponsored by fast food giant Burger King (and featuring the giant-headed king in the opening sequence), the YouTube channel will show one to two-minute cartoons featuring all new characters and scripts. According to a press release sent to TV Squad, there will be 50 shorts that are custom-made for the web (and eventual DVD release, I'm sure.)