Sometimes it takes something big to shake up installed consumer inertia.

Maybe sometime in the future the US will look at the current writers strike as the moment that endless repeats pushed people to look for new sources of entertainment and they went to online video.

Podcasting News quotes recent Comscore research showing ever greater numbers of people in the US watching video content online.

Some of the highlights from the research:

• U.S. Internet users watched more than 10 billion videos online during December, representing the single heaviest month for online video consumption since comScore initiated its tracking service.
• Google’s video sites saw substantial growth, accounting for nearly one out of every three videos viewed online.
• Google’s video sites captured the largest online video audience with 79 million unique viewers, followed by Fox Interactive Media with 43.9 million and Yahoo! Sites with 38.2 million.
• The average video duration was 2.8 minutes.

With these numbers marketing and PR folks should be considering the use of video podcasts to help get their message across. The problem is that media planners are not really upto speed in this space and do not get a commission as they would from radio and TV.