Podcasting is now, and a lot of high visibility talents have adopted it with a passion. Kevin Smith has a whole network of comedy tailored to the taste of Silent Bob fans.

Of that group, Jay Mohr, who I first noticed on his series Action, explained to comic buddy Patrice O'Neal on a recent episode of Mohr Stories, how he started and what he sees as the benefits of podcasting. Someone told Mohr about how podcasting would help fill up his live gigs, and he says this works. I don't doubt it. I'm really happy to listen to Mohr - if only he'd talk a little about Action, which had so many qualities and was so ahead of its time on TV. Mohr told Patrice O'Neal he's seeing better crowds at gigs already, and tried to explain how people listen to audio podcasts while commuting, traveling, etc. They talked about Louis CK as well, another pioneer, this time in self-produced TV Louie. It's all proof that the future is now. What are you waiting for?

Cold Case depends on the music track to establish a feeling for the era the case takes place in. Apparently, this has been the cause of the lack of DVD availablitiy.

So "Lilly" plays the guitar? Actually, my favorite on Cold Case is the B.B. King-looking Thom Barry. I love that voice and can't bear to watch CC in French. I wish he had a bigger role.

But aside from my fandom, there is an unhealthy aspect of this cold. I wondered for a long time why the series, which is in its 7th season and is hugely popular, is not available on DVD. We would have bought one or more of these. The series is also not available on iTunes or Hulu.com, big mystery until I looked at a comment in the Amazon reviews. According to the writer of the review, it's the music negiotiations that have held up availablility of the show on DVD. CBS has some of their shows available to watch on the web site, but Cold Case has no full episodes. Probably for the same reason.

Two questions come to mind:

1) When the music rights were obtained, why didn't someone include DVD rights in the deal? They didn't think it would be a hit, so didn't bother? Whoever did the deal was short-sighted.

2) Music rights holders, what part of create new demand for your your old music is unclear to you? You should be begging for a deal, even a small potatoes deal for your one tune to be played to millions, some of whom will start looking to the music on iTunes, Amazon, in even CD stores while they still exist.

The real trouble with the music busines is this same lack of vision. From "The Internet? Never be a hit." to "The Internet? We need to milk this!" they've still largely not gotten the picture

As a teenager I had a foreign car and had to take to a garage where they could order the parts for these. This same place fixed Mercedes and Rolls. One day I was waiting for my car, and I asked the the repair shop manager why a Rolls cost ten times what any other imported car cost. He looked at me with pity and told me to follow him. We walked over to a silver metal-flake Rolls and he popped the trunk. "Look in there!" he said with a Start Trek "Scotty" accent. I wondered if he was going to shove me in for getting on his nerves, but he said, "Look at the details, mon!  "The inside of the trunk is painted and looks as good as the rest of the car outside!" (Is this still true so many decades in the future?) I never forgot that moment, obviously.

Scotty had a point. Whenever I watch a TV series, I see this in action. TV shows, unlike movies, are made in a kind of assembly line. A formula is found and like, say, that police thing with David Caruso, they repeat it ad infinitum, bad acting and all. But TV can be a work of art if there is attention to detail. I was watching the horribly-named "The Good WIfe" last night and was distracted by one of these details. A young couple was in a bar, and the girl is playing with her iPhone during her conversation in a way that people actually so all the time. It's a silly detail, but it totally made the scene play out in a realistic way.

Secondary casting, which is only "ok" in A Good Wife, is another detail that can amaze. Amazing casting is almost always an element in a good show. It was huge in the Twilight Zone for those who go back that far, but in more recent times, here are my absolute favorite supporting-role casting jobs:

The Sopranos, Brilliant. Primary roles set the standard for excellence.

Six Feet Under, Brilliant. Primary roles were great.

House and Desperate Housewives have both has a few really good secondary roles.

Sons of Anarchy, even more brilliant. I have yet to see one character not perfectly cast, to the most minor role. The attention to detail in this series is buried in the extreme violence that surely turns off a lot of viewers... or does it?

Anyway, whatever it is you do, are you looking at that level of detail, thinking "how can this be better?". Are you painting the inside of the trunk?