A couple of new developments in the TV world suggest we’re moving ever closer to the time when we viewers can become our own program directors – watching what we want when we want.

Sounds like Nirvana, huh?

Or maybe not.

But we may have less and less choice about it.

What’s hurtling us toward this new world is, naturally, the Internet, which has the flexibility traditional media lacks.

A television station sends out one signal at a time. At 9 p.m. on Sundays, ABC towers transmit “Desperate Housewives.” They can’t also send out “Grey’s Anatomy.”

The Internet has no such constraints. ABC puts “Desperate Housewives” on the Web and a viewer can watch it anytime, whether or not someone else has clicked on McDreamy.

Time-shifting became an increasingly significant part of the TV world back when someone finally invented a VCR that viewers could operate. TiVo and its cousins have simplified that process further, and today a growing part of the TV-watching world stores its shows and watches them when it’s convenient, not when they’re “on.”

TV fought this for a while, but now has decided to work with it. Networks are making more shows available over the Net. MTV offers videos over the Net, and movies-on-demand services are thriving.

Meanwhile, a survey by the Project for Excellence in Journalism found the best coverage of this month’s elections wasn’t on networks’ broadcasts, but their Web sites.

The main reason was that the Web sites offer almost unlimited data all the time. If you didn’t want to wait for the on-air anchor or the crawl to update you on the Virginia Senate race, you could get that update on the Web site with a click.

All this has a number of implications. Because watching TV shows on a computer screen can be annoying, look for it to become easier and more common to hook computers into TV sets.

Look, too, for traditional media to offer more content without shaping its use. Just as iPod users choose which songs they want on their “station,” TV viewers can choose from a menu of news or entertainment.

The problem is that the novelty can wear off when viewers realize they may now have to devote more time to TV, not less.

Just as music fans must keep up with new sounds and download them into iPods, TV watchers must now find their own hour for Gaby and Carlos. One suspects some will find it easier to let ABC keep doing it.

For the foreseeable future, ABC surely will. But a story Monday out of Great Britain reported that some officials are already discussing the idea of eventually discontinuing the AM and FM radio bands, figuring at some point most listeners will receive that programming through alternative means anyhow.

The tech train keeps rolling.