From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media, devoted this week to the best of times, the worst of times, these most bewildering of times for television.

My concern as a consumer is that when the business model goes away, all this yummy programming might go away.

If your cable goes out for a day, you're furious, right?

If your newspaper didn't come for a day or if you couldn't get a CD for a day, you'd find a way to move on, but if you can't watch TV, you freak out.

Is it ever okay to deliberately spoil?

Only in the case of Smash.

I was working my first day for a reality TV show.

I wonder, like, how much of it is

documentary and how much of it is theater. And they both started laughing. I'm just trying to get

people to stop respecting me. Do TV. No one will ever take you seriously again. Coming up, TV on the

radio. Listen, we'll still respect TV on the radio.

Listen.

We'll still respect you in the morning.

Hi, podcast listeners.

This is a free service of WNYC Radio.

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This is on the media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

And I'm Bob Garfield.

Once television seemed like a fortress impregnable, a lighthouse beamed directly, reliably, into nearly every American home.

On an ordinary Sunday evening, say November 22nd, 1987 in Chicago, TV was predictability itself,

firmly controlled by its anointed gatekeepers, until that control was stolen twice in one night.

...