The New York Times highlights a growing trend – people are spending more time with online media and less time with television.

Why are fewer viewers watching the new fall television series? Perhaps because they are too busy watching video online.

As broadband service becomes more available at home, the growing prevalence of video programming on the Internet is catching the attention of consumers — not to mention marketers and media companies.

“Video has been liberated” from the TV set, Beth Comstock, president for integrated media at NBC Universal, said last week at a panel at the Ad:Tech conference in New York.

“If you’re in the video business,” she added, referring to companies like her employer, the NBC Universal division of General Electric, “it’s exciting to see where it’s going.”

One direction online video is going is toward the creation of scripted episodic shows that are made expressly for Web sites. Many online video programs, sometimes called Webisodes, emulate television in one respect in that they are released at the same time each day or week.

But there is a difference between online and on the air: the alphabet soup of names for TV networks (e.g., ABC, CBS, ESPN) is replaced on the Internet with madcap monikers intended to be more memorable: Blame Society, Blip.TV, Crackle, Funny or Die, Heavy, My Damn Channel and Viropop, among others.

While the article doesn’t do much to support its point, there’s plenty of research that shows attention, and advertising, is moving from television to Internet video.