Talk about irony. After all the hard work - and whatever else happens behind executive doors and studio walls - the networks endure to create new shows and lure people to tune in to them, in terms of viewer numbers the most popular network isn't even a major studio. It isn't even on TV. It's YouTube.

Of course we should be familiar with YouTube, and not only because we watch it. Our homebrew community has often used it to post videos of their apps in action. We've seen sneak peeks of next-generation platforms, trailers for upcoming games, even gameplay tutorial videos with live commentary for the video game-challenged.

Well, those studio executives are now taking notice of our favorite video-sharing site as well. NBC had to make its pact with it, forming a "strategic partnership" that allows the network to hype its fall season shows on YouTube. In the process they learned one hard lesson from the site's free-for-all policy: exposure, not payment, is what counts. (We further researched on this topic past the source article and discovered that CBS is thinking along those same lines. It's a brave new world, alright.)

(We would have posted a YouTube video featuring the NBC peacock here,)

(except that YouTube disabled the embedding at NBC's request.)
(But you get our idea, right?)