Adam Sternbergh argues that TV's golden era as a dictatorship is over. Instead he envisions a future such as:

Let’s say that Joss Whedon, creator of Firefly, wanted to bring the series back to air. (Though “back to air” is a TV phrase now as anachronistically quaint as “switching the dial.”) Let’s say he found a million Firefly fans online—and, trust me, they’re not hiding—who were willing to pay, say, $39.99 each for a sixteen-episode season of Firefly. (Not an unreasonable price, given how many people pay about that amount for full seasons on DVD.) Suddenly, Joss Whedon’s got roughly $40 million to play with—and he doesn’t need a network. Or a time slot. Or advertisers. He can beam the damn shows right to your computer if he wants to. There’s even a mini-precedent for this: The online phenomenon of “ransom games,” in which a board-game developer sets a price (usually something minuscule, like $1,000), then, once he’s received that amount in pledges from strangers, creates the game and releases it for free.

Good news for Buffy fans. Sorry, I meant Browncoats. He somewhat hits on the age old problem of capitalism, 1) it takes money to make money, and 2) products without a revenue stream will not survive. I think TV as it is currently is approaching obsolencence, nobody really watches it live anymore, we record it on Tivo and skip through the commercials. That's a problem, since TV is free for consumers, but is subsidized by ad revenue. New possibilities are that people will now pay for tv shows; this has happened with the new Ipod video, in the first three weeks, 1 million people downloaded tv shows like desparate housewives, for $2 per episode. FOr me, if they want to charge me $40 per season just to watch the show, i probably won't bite. I'd rather get it on a recordable media (DVD); I feel like I don't get anythign for my money if i just download something and pay for it, and never see it again; I'm not actually paying for a product, I'm paying for intellectual property. However, almost no one else is paying for this; witness the massive downloads of movies and music. Yet, we still buy music on CDs and movies on DVDs. I hope the powers that be don't decide to just push everything towards the pay as you go model. We'd end up paying alot more for alot less product. For example. if you want to see ghostbusters again, you can download it and pay $5 or whatever. Want to see it again later? No problem, that's another $5. If we buy a product, we expect to be able to use the product more than once