Ever since Dwight opened his desk drawer and pulled out his Jell-O encased stapler, I have been an Office devotee. I'm not one to bust out laughing while watching TV but the old stapler-encassed-in-Jell-O gag gets me every time, and in turn, gets my 8:30-9:00 PM Thursday night time slot. Apparently NBC wasn't aware that it had a winner on its hands, and according to an article in Newsday, NBC wasn't going to renew the show.

According to the people at NBC, the iTunes Store and the success that The Office has experienced from it are responsible for keeping the show alive:

"I'm not sure that we'd still have the show on the air" without the iTunes boost, says Angela Bromstead, president of NBC Universal Television Studio, which owns and produces "The Office." "The network had only ordered so many episodes, but when it went on iTunes and really started taking off, that gave us another way to see the true potential other than just Nielsen. It just kind of happened at a great time."

It's interesting to see that Nielsen ratings are becoming less of an issue as the success from online media retailers such as the iTunes Store. One has to wonder what the fate of shows such as Firefly and Futurama would have been had the networks, OK one network, had reliable numbers of non-traditional viewership. It's unfortunate—a show that has won an Emmy for best comedy could be on the chopping block.

Like it or not, Apple, the iPod, and the iTS are all becoming more and more of a force in the media world and the daily decisions they make. As long as Jim continues to encase things in Jell-O, that can only be a good thing.