Who watches TV on TV anymore?

How’s this for layers of irony: my teenage daughter was in her room recently watching the TV show Gossip Girl on her laptop — let’s not get into exactly how — when I overheard the following line from the show: “Who watches TV on TV anymore?” (A quick Google search reveals I didn’t mishear it).

That’s indeed the billion-dollar question as telecom service providers enter today’s video arena — a market that spans cable, satellite, the Internet and mobile devices. At the TelcoTV show this week, Parks Associates released some video-viewing data showing just how confusing — yet full of opportunity — today’s video market really is.

According to Parks, Internet video viewing is indeed on the rise, but so is the viewing of prime-time TV shows. The research shows that 80% of adults in broadband homes do some form of Internet video viewing. Twenty-six million adult home broadband users are watching streaming TV episodes at least once a month, and about 6 million adults in broadband homes pay for premium Web video content on a monthly basis. At the same time, many of those are catching up on TV viewing they missed — with just over half (52%) watching missed episodes, while 37% liked watching shows for free, and 29% appreciated having fewer ads in Web replays.

Those are interesting numbers, and they point to a clear trend that finds viewers attracted to — and searching out — content across a variety of networks and devices. It’s a blurring of the lines that only will continue.

Just this week, AT&T debuted its VideoCrawler video Web search engine, staking a claim in the growing Web video market. It’s not a stretch to imagine VideoCrawler pulled onto AT&T’s U-verse service; Verizon already is beta-testing just such a service, which it demoed at the Telephony LIVE event last month. Comcast, meanwhile, has been crossing the TV and Web worlds with its Fancast site. This doesn’t even touch upon the world of mobile video, including sideloads on devices such as iPods and PSPs and downloads via on-deck offerings from carriers including AT&T, Sprint and Verizon.