Last fall, in a blog post called “The Coming Golden Age of Television,” Cuban refined this argument into an HD manifesto. “In HD households, rather than a 150-channel universe, there may be only a 30-channel HD universe,” he asserted. “That’s a gold mine for those networks in HD.” Not only will their program ratings shoot up, he maintains, but the ads they carry will have more viewers too, because very few of those ad-skipping DVRs that people have will now work in hi-def. As for networks that don’t go HD – either because they rely on old video that can’t be satisfactorily converted or they simply don’t get with it in time – they’ll be relegated to what Cuban calls “a standard-definition ghetto” of ratings-challenged also-rans. In short, he suggests, HD will turn back the clock a couple of decades – before TiVo, before satellite, before the head-long proliferation of digital cable and satellite channels, when the network sitcom and the 30-second spot reigned supreme.