"I'm still looking for a reason to watch TV on this thing," a TV producer and writer, harummphing and staring down at his crackberry, told me this week.

Well, 'Afterworld' may be the ticket. A viral hit on YouTube, the first 13 episodes of this 130-episode short-form series (two- to three-minute episodes)
have been downloaded 700,000 times and Sony is making global deals with cable and mobile companies, Advertising Age reports.

One one hand, I'm excited about early signs of life that the promise of the third screen just might take hold in some new and innovative ways.

On the other, I'm super-ambivalent about advancing a culture -- especially among Gen Y's -- of 24/7, anywhere entertainment.

Isn't it already too much that the TV is on more than 8 hours a day in the typical American home? Or that, according to the US Census Bureau's Statistical Abstract of the United States, adults and teens will spend nearly five months (3,518 hours) in 2007 watching television, surfing the Internet, reading daily newspapers and listening to personal music devices?

Can this all be good? Maybe it's just different. I'm trying to stay open-minded.

Are mobisodes and serialized, short-form content to today's youngfolk what comic strips are to earlier generations?