I went to the talk at 2:00 on saturday and I feel that the speaker made some very interesting points about how TV episodes have changed. Whenever I thought about TV series I thought of the traditional split between what the speaker called "story arcs", series that have a continuing plotline and pretty much require dedicated viewers, versus series which have episodes that are pretty much independent of each other.
What the speaker pointed out was that technology had made the story arc shows more popular and profitable through DVD sales and now online episodes. I also realized that many of the shows that I think of as having independent plotlines actually have subplots. One of the examples of a show with independent plots that the speaker used was CSI. CSI mainly does have independent storylines but I recall a particular subplot that had two of the CSI crew sleeping together. I even recalled several Law and Order episodes that featured a recurring villain. In this way, I see more and more that all shows are starting to at least develop subplots in order to tie together more episodes and make the purchase of a DVD more attractive. I also realize that the overarching issue is probably one of the reasons behind the writers strike: DVD sales are the most profitable part to the writers and many people have replaced DVDs with simply watching online episodes.