Then next week you get 57 minutes of the hour taken up by people reacting to the previous episode's 58-minute-mark-event.

I still love it, though

Watch Gossip Girl Online

there are a few shows i'll be willing to pay for and want more from, and others which i'll never pay for, but will be willing to watch them in an ad-supported model in lower quality.

I think the writers would be freed to actually write if they didn't have to repeat themselves so often. If the story is engaging I won't tune out, even if I feel like I've forgotten or missed something important, I'm sure I'll remember or pick it up as the season goes on. Or I'll just watch the whole series again on DVD (if it really is good enough).

As for paying for episodic content, I bought the first few episodes of Sanctuary (sanctuaryforall.com) when it was just a low budget web show. However, I don't think the price they charged was really worth it. If you add up the number of shows I used to watch on Sky for instance (a UK satellite TV network). and multiply it by the cost of an episode of Santuary, it would be more than the monthly subscription of Sky itself.

I'm all for paying for what I watch. The networks just need to make a la carte tv as cheap as it ought to be.

the greatest factor may be the type of content you're watching. i assume live TV and Sports lands itself to interactivity, while most movies may not.

I'm not sure that's true. For folks my age (Generation Y), passive is just not the mode in which we're used to consuming. Growing up on video games and the Internet, interaction and immediate satisfaction are what we're used to receiving in the entertainment we purchase. That's why our demographic is more likely to buy a record online rather than in a store, less likely to go to a movie in a theatre than rent a DVD and the primary demographic contributor to a now $60 billion video game industry. For us, entertainment has always been something you drop a quarter in the slot and press start to play. I suspect that expectation only becomes stronger with the generations behind us.

You can see it resonate in the success of the products that bring immediate satisfaction and interactivity to previously passive entertainment experiences. Labels are releasing records day-and-date on Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Film studios are releasing AAA-quality console games day-and-date with their releases. And, to a smaller degree, reality competitions like American Idol and Dancing with the Stars, which are blockbusters in terms of television success, can owe at least some of their popularity to the interactive voting mechanics they employ to determine who stays and who goes. The community that has sprung up around the puzzles found in the series LOST are another example of an active viewing experience. I think if we examined the most popular content on television right now, a significant portion of the big winners require active participation of the audience in some way.

In the overall market for American disposable income, the labels, studios and production houses that are most successful provide interactive products on demand. Television may be the last place this paradigm shift is realized, but I think it is inevitable.

It will probably also make sense for content owners to offer their shows (or parts of them) in an ad-supported model, essentially applying a freemium model.

Bringing the Internet to the TV also means that there will be interactivity. It will be different from the PC, since users have a different control device and a different mindset. Having said that, passive viewing will likely remain the primary method of consuming entertainment.