No matter how often it’s said, it’s still true: We are indeed living in an historic period of time, when traditional models are giving way to new and exciting ways of living.

But, as always, old ways die hard.

Take the music industry. Earlier this month, best-selling musicians Radiohead decided to circumvent the record industry altogether and offer their new album for fans directly through a special website. (True, the album will be released later in a standard CD format in stores, but a record label hasn’t been decided on yet.) They may not strictly be the first act to have tried this, but they are the biggest, and the implications are huge, especially as the record industry struggles to maintain their business model as CD sales drop almost exponentially each year.

Similar changes are transforming other aspects of American life. Politicians are catering more to online bloggers and less to the old-school traditional media.

A similar (albeit much less dire) situation faces the television industry as it struggles to find a platform for reaching younger viewers who are much more likely to spend time online or with their iPods than sit in front of a television set. (That’s so 20th century … )

Witness the chaos as Apple spars with NBC over rights to air its television shows. From yesterday’s Washington Post:

… After Dec. 1, when Apple’s contract with NBC expires, all shows that NBC Universal owns, past and present, will disappear from the site. That includes shows from Sci Fi, USA and Bravo cable channels.

… NBC said that before the breakup, its shows accounted for 40 percent of all the television programs purchased on iTunes; Apple said the number was closer to 30 percent.

For Apple, the feud with NBC is the most recent ding in the company’s sleek, it-just-works image. A year ago, Apple added feature-length movies to its iTunes online music store, most for $9.99 each. But the only major studio that let its movies be sold on iTunes was the Walt Disney Co. — and [Apple CEO Steve] Jobs sits on Disney’s board. Since then, only two of the six other major studios — Paramount and Sony — have made some of their movies available for sale on iTunes. Movie studios fear damaging sales of their movies on DVD by undercutting their price on the online music store.

Get used to stories like this — we’re only going to see more as time goes on and modes of interaction get increasingly digital. And who knows where we’ll be in ten years – will the CD be obsolete? Will the traditional half-hour sitcom be watched more on handheld devices? What about commercials? Only time, it seems, will tell.