As I waited, I could see from the teasers the angle that was being developed on the Internet segment: Facebook’s $10B valuation is an indication that we’re in a repeat of the dotcom bubble (smirk knowingly). I contemplated my options for key points to break out of this and came up with a plan. Something simple but pointy enough to break the monotony of condescending skepticism.

So, here’s how it went.

As you might have guessed, Live TV is not a medium I’ve mastered, so my plan was thwarted. Perhaps Dave Asman sensed where I was going when he cut to another guest. Fortunately, unlike Live TV, on the web there’s always a second chance. Here’s what I’d planned to say on this topic.

Asman: …but how will sites like Twitter make any money?

Me (second take): With respect, Dave, I think you might be missing the big picture here. Sure, some social networks might not survive and others might barely break even (or maybe get acquired by companies like Fox) and some investors will no doubt be disappointed because they were hoping for the next Google. But a lot of social sites will survive because they don’t need to make billions to fund their operations, which are steadily declining in cost. So maybe the question you should be asking is, assuming that some of them do survive, what’s going to happen to TV shows like this one when your sponsors discover they can reach your audience for a lot less money than they’re paying you? Social media means disruption – it’s hit the music business, it’s hit the newspaper business, and it looks like TV could be next in line. Think of people like Scott Monty, the head of social media at Ford, who’s able to broadcast his messages whenever he likes directly to over 22,000 followers, for free. Do you think Ford will be eager to continue paying millions of dollars to reach an undifferentiated TV audience with its commercials when Scott can put a link to a YouTube video in a Tweet and get massive exposure online for almost nothing? That kind of communication might not make Twitter wealthy – they’ll have to think of subtler ideas like selling marketing intelligence, or consumer data, or specialized applications – but it sure could change the economics of TV journalism.

As my colleague Allen wrote, Yahoo! Connected TV widgets (announced here) took pole position in the Internet-TV convergence race by partnering with Intel and securing distribution deals with Samsung, Sony, LG, and Vizio to include the Yahoo! TV Widget engine in TV sets scheduled to hit the market this spring. Yahoo! also augmented its “open strategy” by revealing an open TV widget developers’ kit (WDK) and ecosystem that will allow any developers to create TV widgets, have them reviewed by Yahoo!, and (if appropriate) get them listed in Yahoo!’s (or anyone else’s) on-screen (PC & TV) directory. ITV is here at last.

Hardware integration in the sets makes all the difference in terms of experience quality, and creative possibilities are tremendous. But of course we had to ask about the business model. And this is worth a close look.

Yahoo! will not (initially) provide a commerce model for apps (although there’s nothing preventing any widget from conducting ecommerce just as one would on the web), nor is there any claim on widget platform real-estate for advertising (although Yahoo! did concede that its position delivered certain advantages in securing prominent distribution of its apps and content). Naturally there’s a halo effect of being first to market with an open and radical advance in the state of interactive television. But beyond this, Yahoo! has played to its oft-overlooked advantage of still being the largest seller of online display advertising in the world by building a bridge from that world to the much richer world of TV advertising.

You mean web banners on TV? No. There will need to be new formats and standards, and the medium naturally wants to use video, which has not been Yahoo!’s strength online. But Yahoo! has now positioned itself as a leader in this convergence effort, and can wed its unmatched online display ad experience and relationships with the impact (and economics) of the TV model. This won’t happen overnight, to be sure, but the first mover advantage of securing these distribution deals puts the company in a strong position to extend its online display leadership into a potentially huge emerging medium, while playing the “altruist” role of an open platform provider.

So what could go wrong? Well, there are many unanswered questions, but a few dark clouds stand out for me. Putting aside non-trivial questions of Yahoo!’s health and leadership, and many questions about security and competition and regulation, the biggest issue for me is how disruptive this technology appears to be to the incumbent TV business. Cable networks rely on carriage fees – derived from subscribers – to provide much of their revenue. If ample content can be delivered – even in HD – through a Hulu or Netflix or YouTube widget (and, yes, the YouTube widget works in full screen as you might expect) then the tiered cable bundling model could be broken. And while online geofiltering has become fairly robust, the use of consumer video services to retransmit programming beyond geographical windows is hard to avoid. That interferes with the TV licensing business, especially for high-cost programming like sports. All of this suggests many incumbent TV companies have some motivation to try to ensure that video from the open Internet stays off the tube. Nevertheless, illustrating the complexity of this issue, Disney-ABC Television Group President Anne Sweeney made ABC support for “Intel’s TV Widgets” the focus of her keynote Thursday afternoon. Still, this powerful industry has yet to fully show its hand.

Of course, what’s done is done and Yahoo! is far from the only company showing bold moves to send video “over the top.” Move Networks and Neulion, for example, have teamed up to deliver an impressive new internet set-top box that delivers HD video over a standard consumer broadband connection, and was showing live Hockey (Neulion has distribution deals with NHL and NFL) that looked like – well, TV, but with no coax cables, satellite dishes, or rabbit ears in sight. And many others like Boxee, ZeeVee, Livestation, and Roku are delivering products and services along similar lines. Oh, yes, and Apple.

I used to think that, after music, movies would be the next big Internet-driven disruption in media. But it’s TV.