BY DAVID KRONKE

This Future of Television technofestival that took place Monday and Tuesday was in the very same ballroom in the Roosevelt Hotel that housed the very first Oscar ceremony and also where, legend has it, some distraught actor offed himself after losing an Oscar and still haunts the place to this day. (In the form, we've been told, of chill air that suddenly and inexplicably appears in the room; coincidentally, there's an air-conditioning vent just above that spot in the room.)

No one killed him- or herself during this conference - but there were a lot of missed opportunities. By focusing on emerging technologies and narrowcasting and advertising, the event's organizers have betrayed an interest in those who will profit from all of this. But there are those in the TV industry who have some rocky years ahead of them, and even if their futures aren't nearly as rosy, they probably merit discussions on how to survive the coming tumultuous years.

Nonetheless, there was no panel discussion on how the broadcast networks can best weather the storm as their viewership dwindles - or what the effect of their diminished stature means for everyone else. (With fewer mainstream programs succeeding, other sites that cater to fans of those shows will be affected, and the volume of traffic lured to sites based on their appeal would shrink, meaning there will be fewer people to sample the other wares being offered at such sites, and so on.)

Nor was there a panel discussion on how local affiliates will be impacted, how all those local news teams will be bankrolled as the broadcast networks rely less on them and more on other platforms to disseminate their programming. Nor was there, say, a panel on the broader sociological implications of viewers grazing the Internet in search of the latest viral video and utterly ignoring current events, or what happens when news sites, catering to audience demand, lean more heavily on entertainment coverage (the Associated Press recently announced a new division dedicated to infotainment) and moving away from hard news - there's stuff we want to see or read about, and then, there's stuff we need to know, but if our choices are completely in our hands, will we know about corporate or political corruption, or will we base our votes in elections on Obama Girl or those three daffy biddies singing "It's Raining McCain"?

Nope, none of that, but plenty on just how even more impossible it will be to avoid commercials in the future (yay!) and why the kind of throwaway material produced to be watched on cell phones merits an entire panel discussion unto itself).

And then, there was keynote speaker Carson Daly. Introduced as "someone who really does sit at the center of what's going on in pop culture," Daly - wearing baseball cap, sweat shirt and sneakers - announced, "You've had a lot of very smart people talking about the future of television, and I'm not that. So what am I doing here? It's a good question."

The answer probably wasn't as good. "The answer is passion," Daly declared. "I'm passionate about entertaining, passionate about television ... passionate about finding out my future stake in it."

Daly posited himself as someone studying new media while working in traditional media, and concluded, "If I live in both of these worlds, maybe I can introduce them to one another."

He then discussed a few of the projects that he has been involved in, attempting to combine traditional TV and interactivity. Almost invariably, he concluded, "It was an idea ahead of its time," or "Ultimately, it didn't pan out."

Daly's speech wasn't ahead of its time, but in the end it didn't pan out, either. It wasn't a bad speech if you were a neophyte in this realm, but no one in attendance was a neophyte.

One last thought from Daly's speech: "TV is nowhere near dead. That's just a bunch of crap."

As are, I've decided, the rest of the panels. There's your Future of Television, kids: People dazzled by shiny objects and favoring jargony buzzwords over discussions on how to create the sort of programming people might want to watch.

Notes

Amy Sherman-Palladino is no doubt currently scratching her head over Fox's abrupt yanking of her show "The Return of Jezebel James" after only three episodes: "Over on The CW, 3 million viewers is considered a megahit!" she's opining.

The stuntcasting of Britney Spears on "How I Met Your Mother" (gee, what a nothing-burger role) did the trick, earning the sitcom 10.6 million viewers (meaning it got about 2 million people who otherwise would've been doing something, anything else to tune in) and its best 18-49 demographic showing in a long time.

Fox, surveying the miserable numbers for its midseason shows "New Amsterdam," "Canterbury's Law" and the aforementioned "Jezebel James," has no choice but to renew "Prison Break" for a fourth season. I forget: Is there anyone left in prison that anyone cares about to break out? Or will Michael just get himself thrown into a local pokey just for grins so he can pull off a hat trick?

Did Sinbad of all people torpedo Hillary Clinton's campaign over her comments on sniper fire when she went to Bosnia?

According to the British newspaper the Guardian, "The comedian Sinbad took issue with her version of the Tuzla trip. He was with her, along with the singer Sheryl Crow, to entertain U.S. troops at the air base. Sinbad, an Obama supporter, in an interview with the Washington Post, said the biggest concern facing them in Tuzla was `do we eat here or at the next place?' "