ABC certainly is taking its sweet time in releasing the first episode of “V,” a sci-fi television series that debuted earlier this week on the Web in any substantial way.

The network is showing about nine minutes of the redo of the 1980s miniseries about a lizardy alien invasion disguised as a peace mission by outerspace hotties online on its site.

But pretty much the only way you could watch “V” in its entirety this week, if you missed its broadcast Tuesday, is by buying it on Amazon.

It initially streamed there free, to build momentum, as well as on Apple (AAPL) iTunes, but now the only place you can get it–if you fork over $2–is Amazon (AMZN).

That all changes tomorrow, when the show–whose debut racked up surprisingly high numbers at 13.9 million viewers–shows up for free on ABC’s site and on the Disney (DIS) network’s joint venture video partner, Hulu.

If you cannot wait, here is the extended promo video for “V,” with a glimpse of scaly badness, as well as a preview of the show next week:

How much should you ponder this amazing video from an upcoming new documentary series by Ken Burns–titled “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea”–on America’s national parks system?

Muchly much, as the national parks have indeed been one of this country’s most amazing gifts to itself.

Set to air on PBS on September 27, the creators stuck a video clip that is almost 27 minutes long on YouTube and on the series’ own really nice Web site, which is a pretty terrific thing to do.

The real series is 12 hours long and in six parts, directed by the still-elfish Burns and co-produced with Dayton Duncan, who also wrote the script.

As they describe it, the series “is the story of an idea as uniquely American as the Declaration of Independence and just as radical: that the most special places in the nation should be preserved, not for royalty or the rich, but for everyone.”

After having recently just visited the wonder that is Jackson Hole, Wyoming, which is much featured in the series, you can say that again.

Here’s the video clip (it’s August, so take the time to watch it):

[Photo above: Tourists at an erupting Old Faithful. Yellowstone National Park, 1884. Source: Haynes Foundation Collection, Montana Historical Society]

Big, giant and prolonged sigh–as well as a cranky-old-lady shake of the fist–to our distant cousins over at the Fox television network, who dinged BoomTown’s favorite sci-fi show, “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” today.

I am officially in a Summer Glau funk, with major gadget withdrawal.

After much fake agonizing over the fate of “Sarah Connor,” Fox programmers finally stuck a fork in the series after two seasons. Loosely based on the movie franchise, the show garnered a passionate fan base online and off, but not enough to merit being renewed.

It’s ironic since the latest film in the cyborg-versus-man epic, “Terminator Salvation,” will open this Thursday.

It is the next blockbuster in a tech-heavy summer movie season, following the boffo reception that the new “Star Trek” has gotten (next up: “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”).

But the arrival of “Terminator Salvation,” with its noisy, Armageddon-is-nigh theme, could not save the more thoughtfully dark “Sarah Connor.”

Thank goodness, then, for YouTube and a very pissed-off and half-naked young actor named Thomas Dekker, who plays a teenage savior of humanity, John Connor, in the TV series.

In this perfect online video clip he did himself, the real-life (and very wild-eyed) Dekker calls Fox’s viewer comment line to express his support for the show in no uncertain terms:

Full disclosure: News Corp. (NWS) owns Fox, as well as Dow Jones, which owns this Web site.

Now, apparently, it is time to meet EQAL, a “social entertainment company” that is still essentially the two guys–Greg Goodfried and Miles Beckett (pictured here. left to right)–who dreamed up LG15 and also the KateModern Web series.

Except, rather than operating out of their homes on a wing and a prayer, they are now armed with $5 million in funding.

That investment in the Sherman Oaks, Calif.-based start-up, which was announced in April, included some true Silicon Valley luminaries, such as entrepreneur Marc Andreessen, investor Ron Conway and former Googler Georges Harik, as well as Conrad Riggs and Spark Capital.

Sources also said Google’s (GOOG) Marissa Mayer is one of the new investors in EQAL.

With its small pile of cash, Beckett and Goodfried are planning new online shows–one of which will debut in September–as well as a number of other things, in yet another attempt to create a successful mesh between Hollywood and technology and thus yield a lucrative and lasting interactive hit.

If anyone can give it a try, it would be this pair, which unleashed LG15 upon the unsuspecting Web population in mid-2006.

Unsuspecting, largely because most people at first thought the user-generated-looking online video of the incessant jabbering of its attractive female lead right into a computer’s camera was real.

Instead, it was actually the “story of a group of young adults fighting against an evil secret society, the Order, that uses the blood of girls with a rare blood trait to extend the lives of a small group of Elders.”

And they also used Neutrogena products while doing it! (The skin care company was an early sponsor, and a scientist from Neutrogena was also written into the story.)

So with clean faces and over the course of its two-year run, LG15 ran to more than 550 episodes with 100 million views.

Beckett and Goodfried also launched KateModern on the Bebo social network in the U.K. a year ago, which also just concluded.

The “story of a group of British young adults investigating a creepy, New Age religion called ‘The Hymn of One’ that is actually a front for the Order” garnered 50 million views.

Well, it’s all disorder now, as EQAL tries to keep the hits coming without LG15, by working with writers, producers, media companies and advertisers to create new interactive shows that also have engaged online communities.

EQAL’s motto: “The Show Is Everywhere.”

Well, we’ll see, but here are Beckett and Goodfried–the former was a physician and the latter a lawyer in their previous lives–giving me a tour of their new office in Los Angeles’s “Valley,” and also sitting for a longish video interview about where content online is going.

That’s a question a lot of people in both Hollywood and Silicon Valley hope they can answer.

Here’s the video:

Also, how any of it is going to make any money. Yes, that.

As part of this journey, I will be visiting online content efforts of all kinds, shapes and sizes–from small one-man bands to large-scale projects by big studios.

And what better way to start than with Hayden Black, creator of two really interesting Web series: a behind-the-scenes spoof of a local news broadcast called “Goodnight Burbank” and “abigail’s ‘x-rated’ teen diary,” in which Black plays a very believable teen girl.

“Burbank” came online in 2006 and “abigail” just this year.

Both have garnered millions of views, without any marketing, at a low cost of a few thousand dollars per episode.

Black, 34, who was formerly in television marketing and wrote and produced for the medium, has a production company called Evil Global Corporation.

I visited him when I was in L.A. recently, where we talked about how how he puts together the show.

Obviously, the business plan is still small scale, with advertising and product placement as its best possibility for money-making, along with making online hits to offline ones.

But first, Black has to build an audience, and he is doing OK so far. “Burbank” is one of the most popular downloads on iTunes, and Black has just inked a deal to appear on Hulu.com too.

In addition, he has presence on many social-networking sites and is about to launch a widget that will allow his audience to talk to each other from any of them.

Here’s why I like about Black: He is fresh, curious and runs circles around a lot of other online episodic efforts armed with a lot more money and so-called “Hollywood experience.”

Also, he’ll try anything.

Most of all, Black also does not dismiss the old way of doing things, focusing on development and noting quite wisely, “Storytelling never goes away.”

Indeed, it does not.

Here’s my video interview with Black:

And here is a recent episode of “Burbank”:

And here is a recent episode of “abigail”: