Okay, let's see if we've got the connections right, here... The Drew Carey Show is on ABC. ABC is owned by Disney. Disney is buddy-buddy with Pixar. Pixar is run by Steve Jobs. Steve happens to be the iCEO of Apple. And Apple makes QuickTime, a digital media architecture that can stream video right over the Internet. Have we got all that correct?

So when we heard that tonight's episode of The Drew Carey Show was going to be simulcast over the Internet as part of a Sweeps Month promotional stunt, our razor-sharp minds made all those connections instantaneously-- and we figured, hey, there's a pretty good chance that the web side of the show might be available as a QuickTime stream. At the very worst, we assumed that we'd have to fire up RealPlayer and put up with a slightly grainier picture. Imagine our surprise, then, when we surfed on over to the ABC's pre-show site a half-hour before the episode started to see what we needed to do to prepare. It said we'd need a TV. (Check. Duh.) It told us we needed at least a 4.0 version of either Netscape or Internet Explorer. (Check.) It said we'd need Microsoft Windows Media Player. (Uh oh.)

That's right, the only way to participate in the full-on multimedia immersive DrewCast was to use Microsoft's streaming video architecture. There was no QuickTime, and there wasn't even the typically ubiquitous RealVideo option-- we're talking Windows Media only. Now, despite what you may be thinking as a logical and relatively sane individual, that didn't necessarily leave Mac-using Drew fans out in the cold; there is a Macintosh version of Windows Media Player available to download. (And yes, it's still called Windows Media Player, and before you ask why, just keep telling yourself that we're talking about Microsoft, here.) The catch is that the Mac version of Windows Media Player is still in beta. Given how unstable released versions of Microsoft software seem to make our Macs, we figured we'd give it a miss.

And so, we stuck strictly with the tube-jockey portion of tonight's Drew, baffled as to the sudden Windows bias of the otherwise seemingly Mac-friendly ABC. During the show we spotted Mimi's usual Grape iMac, a new Blueberry iBook in Drew's house (complete with an accurate $1599 price tag-- who woulda guessed that Winfred-Louder was an authorized Apple dealer?), and several iMac commercials which aired throughout the evening. All that did was make the Media-Player-only webcast seem that much more bizarre. After all, Disney's even one of the channels on QuickTime TV. So whose nutty idea was it to use only Microsoft media for this historic event? Somebody oughta get canned...