Traditional television is falling into a hole, so guess what some broadcasters are doing? Yep, they’ve opted to dig faster.

The other day I was watching a Raymond rerun with my wife. If you’re married and have kids, it’s a funny show.

Suddenly, the show halted: it just paused. Before I had a chance to wonder what was going on, a character from another show appeared in a small bar at the bottom, told us his show is good and we should give it a watch, and then held up a remote, clicked a button and Ray continued wisecracking.

I was open-mouthed with shock. The network had decided it was a good idea to interrupt a show I chose to watch in order to advertise a different show. Why did it do this? Because people no longer watch commercials; we now either record shows and fast-forward the boring bits or we channel surf till the show returns.

With no actual ideas on how to get us to sit quietly and watch commercials again, some networks are just baking commercials into their shows. Two things will happen if this trend grows. First, many of us will simply stop watching TV. I was so disgusted I simply turned Raymond off, so the advertisers who actually bought commercial space lost me as a potential customer. Way to go TV execs. Second, this tactic will push people towards illegally downloading ripped DVD content or to renting TV on DVD and copying the discs. Wrong it may be, but you actually get to see the show.

Then the networks will carp even more about piracy, insert more commercials and the cycle will continue.

Now, I freely admit I don’t know how to fix the TV advertising model. I do know that annoying the people you are trying to reach is not the way to go.

This dilemma has been neatly summed up in The Future of Television, a study conducted by Nordicity Group for the Banff World Television Festival and the Canadian Television Fund.

From the study: “An increasing appetite for consumer viewing of TV online, evolving distribution technologies, and shifting revenues streams are threatening an imminent collapse of the Canadian Broadcasting System.

“New entrants in the broadcasting system—content aggregators, curators, and niche channels—will challenge the existing players, and a zero-sum game may emerge with clear winners and losers based on, among other factors, who owns content rights and can exploit them. But this zero-same gum can be prevented if broadcasters, producers and BDUs [Broadcast Distribution Undertaking, a CRTC term for a cable or satellite service providers] can work together to exploit the opportunities of new platforms.”

The full report is available here. http://www.bwtvf.com/pdf/2007_Banff_Green_Paper_WebVersion.pdf

One broadcaster taking at least some steps to avoid the zero sum is CTV. Check out the video section at www.ctv.ca/idol. Video highlights have been on offer for quite some time but as of July 20 CTV will begin offering All Access, online-only behind-the-scenes video segments that essentially add a third night of programming to Idol’s twice-a-week schedule.

What this does is build Web traffic among the people already watching the show on TV and encourage the hip online-only crowd to actually watch the show. Both the old and new media folks benefit.

Now, I’m not suggesting that CTV is a pioneer in this space—NBC’s online content for The Office is almost as good as the show itself—but TV execs who create these online promotions are light years ahead of the dim and ham-fisted geniuses who interrupted Raymond and actually got me to turn off the TV.

If television is being challenged by new media, then perhaps it is only those who have grown up with new media who can make TV work in a world of blended content.