TVSquad

Here's a scary thought. One day, you might have to actually pay for all that free quality programming beaming through the magic picture box in your living room.

A scary new article by the Associated Press shows that advertising revenue has not provided enough income for the free networks to support all of their programming efforts. And thanks to the rise of cable and the web, some companies are considering new business models that are cutting the "free" out of "free TV."

Given the way things are going, do you think there could come a time when free TV is a thing of the past like top 40 AM radio, Olestra chips and an ozone layer?

Our friends at AOL TV have launched a new video site today that they're pretty proud of. The new site, SlashControl, provides thousands of free full-length TV episodes of current and past TV shows, as well as lots of free full-length movies.

Navigation is fairly simple: go to either "Free Movies" or "Free TV Shows" and click on the first letter of the show or movie you want to watch. Shows are also easily searchable and grouped by season. Through AOL's partnerships with Hulu, ABC, CBS, Showtime, and a number of other providers, the list of available shows is fairly comprehensive. For shows that don't have full episodes available, there are plenty of embeddable clips available for viewing.

After taking a quick stroll through the site, the interface looks pretty easy to use and navigate, and it's always good to look for what you want on one site instead of all over the place. So take a look at SlashControl; hopefully, it'll only suck away half your day instead of the whole thing.

Yesterday, Keith McDuffee made a great post about his preview of AOL's new online television goldmine, In2TV. The site has gone live to the public today, with plenty of your old favorites ready for streaming. It's completely free (ad-supported) and these shows aren't going to watch themselves, so what are you waiting for? Now, if you will excuse me, I need to start my Freakazoid marathon.