I feel like TiVo actually opened up a lot of this and the nascent streaming available at the time (hulu/youtube?) is what kicked off the rise of actually serialized and episodic TV.

It is very funny having to explain to people why shows like "star trek: the next generation" basically had to reset everything by the end of the episode back into it's original state in order for syndication to work (episodes are basically played in any order aside from the few 2-parter episodes).