First they called it Video on Demand. Then they called it the big bad world of broadband video, which would overtake everything. Next, Youtube, then Googtube, and the promise of User Created Content. It even made its way into small portable devices such as mobile phones. Now, IPTV and the promise of Joost and Zattoo. Conan O' Brien gets it dead right:

Can't get enough nerdiness on Slashdot and Kuro5hin? Starting Sept. 6, PBS will broadcast a Web-exclusive downloadable series featuring the best of the nerd lot.

Dubbed NerdTV^{â„¢ ?}, the series of 13 one-hour shows will be hosted by technology columnist and industry insider Robert X. Cringely.

Cringely, author of "Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can't Get a Date," will interview such nerd notables as Pay-Pal co-founder Max Levchin, original Macintosh programmer Andy Hertzfeld and Bill Joy, father of Berkeley UNIX.

In a column on pbs.org last week, Cringely offered a bunch of nerd-friendly production and format specs for the series and stressed that NerdTV will be distributed under a Creative Commons license, which means viewers can redistribute the shows at will. Which is an interesting development, the CC license is beginning to be heralded among music circles as well, because it affords an artist the ability to remix and mash licensed songs as they see fit for non-commercial purposes. Personally, I can't wait to make my own 'remixed' versions of Cringely's show for my own nefarious purposes.