A while back I argued that once it's freed from the tyranny of channels and schedules, TV would cease to come primarily in half-hour chunks. Instead, more video content would be in shorter canape-sized morsels, say three, five, or ten minutes in length, better suited to online viewing habits and bite-sized attention spans. And, sure enough, Al Gore's Current TV is doing just that (although why it isn't all stream/downloadable yet is a mystery). They explain:

We slice the rest of the schedule into short pods -- each just a few minutes long -- that range far and wide, from international dispatches to profiles of cool people to intelligence on new trends. This is not a traditional TV network; watching Current, you'll see more, on more topics, from more points of view.

The rise of shorter, smaller content is actually a trend that's affecting all media and entertainment, reflecting not just the taste of a quick-change generation but also an increasing variety and flexibility in the ways we can consume media. As we leave the era of one-size-fits-all distribution, we'll increasingly see the end of one-size-fits-all content. Indeed there's an increasing amount of evidence that this is already underway:

Note that this increased range of distribution options can allow for longer content, too, with the rise of TV shows on DVD (where you can watch much of a season at a single sitting) as a prime example. But the overall trend is toward shorter, faster, smaller everything. We're increasingly fine-slicing both the time we give media and the media itself. Small is the new big.