Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) announced late yesterday that it has sold 200 million TV episodes over its ubiquitous iTunes service. While that is quite a milestone for the company, it still pales in comparison to the billions of songs the company has sold. Still, not all iPods can display TV shows and videos. It's foolhardy to expect the entire installed base of iPods to do anything but music, although all newer models and the iPhone can download and display video programs.

The bigger news is that all that content could be seen as a pretty significant boon to some of the largest content providers -- NBC and Disney (NYSE: DIS). Disney CEO Bob Iger indicated that his company has sold "40 to 50 million" TV shows over iTunes. I won't repeat that the television viewing paradigm has shifted. Well, unless ratings firm Nielsen says it first.

Silicon Alley Insider did the math and determined that iTunes paid out about $280 million in TV show revenue sharing in the last three years, compared with NBC Universal's latest quarterly profit of $645 million. The 36-month figure of $280 million sounds a tad paltry, but in all reality, this is just the beginning. More and more consumers will get content from devices like iPods, and that amount will only grow over time. As has been the case with Apple for some time, the company is positioned to be a growing content distribution provider. Why? It was there first in almost every way.

The rules of engagement within the television broadcasting industry are changing -- everyone knows this. But the trusted guard of influential and mind-shaping TV is ill-equipped (as always) to change at the breakneck pace it needs to and therefore new, disruptive industries swing by for a chat and end up making up new rules. Case in point: Google Inc.'s (NASDAQ:GOOG) YouTube.

While YouTube is not a replacement for television at this time (lower quality, internet connection needed, etc.), it is becoming increasingly so for some people. As that list grows steadily but surely, the big studios -- like the music and newspaper industries before them -- will learn to compete or face the defection of ad clients and audiences to newer online media that don't have such a tightfisted control over content. Consumers demand more -- and they are getting it here in the infancy of internet TV.

Will studios like Viacom Inc. (NYSE:VIA) and General Electric Co.'s (NYSE:GE) NBC use backhanded tactics to get their respective programming on YouTube? Sure they would, as a last-second desperate tactic. The largest video portal in the world is YouTube, not Viacom or NBC; but like I said earlier, YouTube needs to step up things quite a bit to achieve the quality and accessibility freely available analog networks now have (until 2009 when digital TV will be mandatory).

Once that internet connection in all those homes, apartments, condos and other living structures is as common as running water, the age of internet TV will have really arrived. If traditional studios think they have it bad now, it's not even close. So, to all network television execs -- better start ponying up for those partnerships unless you want to explain to your largest advertisers the audience shift out of your properties and onto ... YouTube. Next up -- the Apple TV's capability to change the game, in traditional Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) style.

Just when we thought there was even more stuff to bandy about during the morning news shows...er, entertainment shows, NBC today announced that it would actually be extending its "Today" show to four hours from three. Oh no.

Just kidding -- there are millions of us who get our daily fill of the news from the morning shows or from -- gasp, newspapers -- and NBC as well as ABC and CBS must continue to capitalize on those audiences as best they can. Even so, there are risks that NBC could possibly dilute one of its most profitable franchises as it extends the show by an entire hour. That's what sagging profits will do to you I guess.

Does this mean that the dreadful soap opera contingent is no longer being an effective eye-catcher? Soap operas, in my opinion, turned to trash long ago and it's not really amazing that they are now not worth much and must be displaced by NBC's early morning show for news and announcements. But then again, Al Roker is better watching than soap opera actors, yes?