Is broadcasting going the way of the antenna?

As the dark days of this long winter break from new episodes continue, I've been occupying my nights in a much more fruitful way. I've been watching an excessive amount of Veronica Mars on DVD. I think that it may be the only way to get into the show. I had tried to watch it several times because of the good reviews or because of its position after the Gilmore Girls, but I had never been able to become engaged or I would find myself annoyed at a completely random detail: "Eww! Why is the Dad bald???" I'm not the only one who has this problem. My confession to my New Year's Eve companions that the show was my new passion was met with a "That's even worse than the Gilmore Girls." I, of course, replied with my stock "It's really great once you get into it," which, in turn was met with "I don't want to get into it!" Of course, if anyone sat down and watched the pilot, they'd be into it and then they would follow my lead and watch all of Seasons 1 and 2 on DVD in less than 3 weeks. Of course, now that I've watched all of those seasons, I am left in the middle of season 3 with no clue what's going on. I can't decide whether to suck it up and start from wherever they are in the narrative or ignore the show all together until Season 3 is released on DVD next fall or to download the episodes from this season that I've missed so far. But, I hate coming into any narrative having missed everything and I don't want to miss another minute and I hate watching anything on my tiny little computer screen. I know what you're thinking "Suck it up, dinosaur! This is the age of YouTube and streaming video..." but I'm just not there yet and I like my box, y'know the one with the cathode ray tube.
It's the curse of the serial drama: it's hard to pick up the narrative. It's why my buddy Ludovici hasn't watched Heroes, even though he'd be totally into it. He missed the beginning. It's why i've never seen Lost or 24 or any of those other shows. You have to get on at the beginning of the ride or the ride is no fun or totally confusing. It's why most serial dramas fail and are cancelled quickly. It sucks when they are cancelled too quickly to even release a DVD, because then it's a fragmented narrative. It can be such a vibrant form of narrative, but it is so difficult to build a TV sized audience.
It makes me wonder just how long broadcast TV will last. More and more, people want to watch things on their own time with minimal commercial interruption, so they pay extra for DVR or Tivo or they download the episode online or they wait for the DVD to come out. The act of making sure to be home at a certain time to watch something as it is broadcast is slowly being relegated solelyto sports broadcasting. But, if they stop broadcasting the shows in the first place, then there wouldn't be anything to Tivo or put on DVD or download (except all that ironic train wreck crap all over YouTube). Perhaps, Big Media will start using the same business model as small independent film distributors. Small film distributors lose a lot of money putting their movies out into movie theaters, so that when they are promoting the DVD, more people will have heard of the film because it had a capsule review in their local paper. Similarly, TV will begin to view its broadcasts merely as advertisements for the DVD release or the website or whatever. I hope they do. It would be sad to see the serial drama go away. It is my current favorite form of narrative.