Sarah Palin may not have reigned in the budget in Wasilla.

Sarah Palin may not have graduated from the first, second, third or fourth college she attended.

Sarah Palin may not said no to “Bridge to Nowhere” pork.

No matter what you think of Palins accomplishments, though, it’s hard to argue with BusinessWeek’s claim that Palin and Saturday Night Live have taken Internet video “to the next level”:

It’s all over but the inauguration. Barack Obama has swept to victory, and Sarah Palin can go back to moose hunting in Alaska. It was an election that broke all kinds of barriers, and few of us will soon forget it. Here’s one barrier smashed you may not have noticed: Online video finally went mainstream, thanks to Tina Fey, Saturday Night Live, and, of course, Sarah Palin.

You had to be living in a cave somewhere south of where Osama Bin Laden is hiding not to know that one of the high points of Election 2008 was the weekly spoof-fest served up by SNL that featured zingers so dead-on that they became watercooler fodder from coast to coast. Ratings for the 33-year-old show jumped by 76% this year, to 9.8 million late-night comedy watchers. But folks who didn’t (or couldn’t) stay up that late could watch the bits on NBC.com (GE), Hulu, or any number of places where videos can be ogled online.

While we gave more credit to Tina Fey when we talked about this last month, there’s no doubt that interest in Palin helped push this over the top.

The SNL Tina Fey Palin videos demonstrated that mainstream video can now attract larger audience online than on TV.

This is a game-changer for mainstream media. It will probably take them a couple of years to react to this shift – but Internet video is rapidly becoming the future of television.