If you blinked, you missed NBC Universal’s hotly hyped new show “Quarterlife.” After airing a single episode on NBC, the media titan decided to move the program to its Bravo cable network. NBC—and the creators of “Quarterlife”—fell into a classic trap of trying to “cram” disruption into an existing model.

No one has yet figured out how to create a sustainable video success on the Web. It is clear, though, that viewing habits are different on the Web. Users, especially those lacking high-speed Internet connections, will tolerate lower production quality. Comedy works well. Anything longer than six or seven minutes seems to sputter.

Quarterlife's creators Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick sought to bring television production qualities to the Internet. The two certainly have an impressive resume. They created landmark television series “thirtysomething” and “My So-Called Life.”

The duo followed the television playbook: hire a set of attractive actors and actresses (including one with online credibility: Bitsie Tulloch of lonelygirl15 fame), use polished scripts, and create professional-grade content. They did embrace at least some of the more distinct aspects of Internet videos, with short episodes and a heavy dose of interactive content.

The show did reasonably well on MySpace, with some episodes drawing several hundred thousand viewers.

By and large, though, the show’s creators fell into a classic trap. Instead of embracing the disruptive nature of the Web, they sought to force-fit old models onto a new delivery mechanism.

This isn’t unusual. Established companies have strong tendencies to conform new business opportunities to current operations and models. The challenge comes when the conformity causes the company to change the new business in ways that destroy its uniqueness.

The disruptive literature calls this cramming. Cramming made it hard for newspapers to respond to the Internet, Eastman Kodak to respond to digital imaging, and vacuum tube giants to commercialize transistor technology.

So Quarterlife was television crammed onto the Web. Then, NBC compounded the Quarterlife cram. It acquired the rights to air the series and immediately plunked it onto its prime-time schedule. It marketed the series aggressively. It combined together multiple episodes to fit into a pre-determined programming block.

What was NBC’s reward for cramming television-on-the-Web back onto television? The network’s lowest ranked show in a 10 p.m. timeslot in 17 years. This is not a surprise. Cramming is expensive, and rarely works.

While some pundits say popular Web programming “only” draws a fraction of the viewers of popular television programming, that’s the wrong way to frame the challenge. In a world of abundance, the marginal cost of adding additional content is low. Production costs shrink, and a company that creates the right business model can learn to love small audiences.

A winning video model will emerge on the Internet. It is likely to come from innovators from outside the industry who approach the problem from a fresh perspective. Companies that break free will marry new content models that are attuned to the unique nature of the medium with a new business model that supports the content. Those that try to force-fit old models onto new mediums will struggle.