Investors Business Daily puts the news in context and looks at why media companies are becoming more and more willing to let sites like Joost distribute their content.

"Joost is trying to position itself as a true TV service over the Internet," said Len Feldman, an analyst at Multimedia Research Group. "They are trying to be a content aggregator that acts almost like a cable company, with an enormous store of content that you can watch on demand whenever you want."

It's not clear whether Joost and companies like it will pose a threat to cable companies, analysts say. The producers of popular TV shows themselves are not sure where things are headed. They want to avoid making the same mistakes the music industry made by trying futilely to prevent music-file swapping.

"The media entertainment companies are eagerly rushing into unknown territory," said James McQuivey, a media analyst at Forrester Research. "They're saying that if people want to watch their shows over the Internet, then they want to be the ones that get the ad revenue for this."