(This is the fourth post of a multi-post series on the relationship between the real and digital world. To read them all, start here, and continue here and here.)

“Does anyone know when the new ‘primetime’ is?” Dr. Tinkcom posed this question one day during a critical theory seminar. We had been discussing advertising and the impact of the Internet on traditional television viewership. Several students hypothesized that busy schedules had shifted prime-time back a couple hours. Others, myself included, wondered if it had been obliterated all together.

“Its between 8 and 9 in the morning, and 5 and 7 at night,” he answered, but then asked: “Does anyone know why?” Considering my own penchant for anything in syndication, I figured it was due to shows like The Simpsons and King of the Hill that show across the nation during the 5-7 time block. It was one of my quieter peers who answered his question correctly. “Commuters,” she said simply.

If we are to talk about the ways in which digital experiences and practices shape our participation in the real world, it would be amiss to not talk about impacts on consumerism. The varieties of consumer practices that are available to us online have obviously had dramatic impact on our consumer expectations and behavior. Some are more glaring than others. When I moved to D.C., for example, I found it easier to order house wares via the Internet than to drive to the nearest Target in Virginia. Online consumer reviews have also reduced our willingness to purchase high-end consumer electronics from local sources. Add in the tax-free merchant advantage, and you have a combination of convenience, information and price that has taken Amazon (and its stock) to impressive heights.

That said, no other industry has been subject to as much speculation and theorizing about the ‘net effect’ than television. The proliferation of digital devices and Internet based access to video has certainly restructured viewing behaviors to take advantage of those commuter hours. Additionally, access to TiVo and other DVRs have changed our relationship with television programming, allowing, as Dr. Tinkcom explained during our seminar, even those who drive to work the option of watching half of an episode while getting ready in the morning, only to finish it that evening. (I will admit that I have found myself doing the same thing, but on either side of a night’s sleep.)

But have our online media viewing habits changed our TV viewing preferences? In other words, despite the ability to control media and access programming on the fly, has YouTube changed our expectations for TV? In a glib remark, Phu, a chief architect at work, summed up his opinion nicely. “The problem with YouTube,” he said, “is that there isn’t anything good on.” I tried to argue that that wasn’t really the point, but my passionate remarks did little to blunt his point.

Last Tuesday, NBC took the biggest Net to TV gamble with the premiere of the new series “quarterlife.” quarterlife caught my attention last fall for the exactly the reason Phu had mentioned: it was on YouTube, and it was good. NBC agreed, and in mid-November bought the rights to this by-product of the writer’s strike, hoping to capture YouTube style aesthetics and subject matter (the story-line revolves around the life of a video blogger and her friends) in an angsty drama that captures the complications of interpersonal space and privacy in a socially networked web 2.0 world. NBC bundled four 10-minute webisodes for a television hour, launched a massive Internet advertising campaign, and waited for the netizens to arrive.

Internet users, however, can be a demanding bunch. Tuesday night NBC had the lowest viewership for that time slot in two decades, and immediately canceled the series. Declaring the Internet-TV experiment a failure, NBC has replaced quarterlife with episodes of ‘Deal or no Deal’ for their Tuesday line up, and plans to discard the rest of the quarterlife episodes on Bravo.

What went wrong? Did the episodes not bundle well into a 1-hour time slot? Did the online availability of the show for months hurt viewership? Or was it just not that good?

Co-creator Marshall Herskovitz has said that quarterlife probably shouldn’t have gone to network, but stayed on cable where it would have been able to find a niche market. “It is important to remember that ‘quarterlife’ has already proved itself as a successful online series and social network with millions of enthusiastic fans. We live in a media world today where many shows are considered successful on cable networks with audiences that are a fraction of those on the Big Four. I’m confident that ‘quarterlife’ will find the right home on television as well.”

We have seen the webisode format and TiVo style relationship with TV restructure the format of episodes, particularly the demise of the cross-commercial cliff hanger. This, however, doesn’t mean that the content distributed via YouTube’s on-demand model might just not be appropriate for television. Of course we may just be looking at this backwards. After all, we are presuming that network viewership is an indicator of success, that the traditional distribution model isn’t broken, and that the content on network television is good enough to begin with. Internet available network content, iTunes video downloads and Netflix “Watch Now” seem to all indicate that it is the Internet that stands to benefit.

A conversation Steve relayed to me seems to confirm the point. “Did you watch the season finale of Project Runway last night?” Steve asked one of his students earlier this week.

“Nah,” the student casually replied, “I’ll just download it online.”