Trio is dead. Long live Trio.

We knew this was coming. Actually, we knew it was coming this day, because NBC Universal was kind enough to inform the 14 members of the press who had ever seen the Trio channel -- and the six of us who cared enough to keep writing about it, long after it was clear it would not survive -- that it was shutting off the channel Dec. 31.

Like many clever ideas, Trio was concocted by Canadians. It started out as a fine arts channel, was passed around by a couple of different owners, and wound up in the hands of Barry Diller, who gave it to an indie film producer named Lauren Zalaznick who'd also worked at VH1.

Zalaznick did a fine job with little more than pocket change and chewing gum assembling a network. Documentaries every night, old Letterman and "Laugh-In" reruns, fun stuff like "Good Clean Porn" (X-rated movies, non-sex scenes only), and a mess of low-cost originals from the endless idea factory known as World of Wonder.

But Trio was stuck on digital cable, and it wasn't going anywhere. Zalaznick was picked up in the NBC/Universal deal and given a much bigger sandbox. Nowadays, Bravo looks a lot like the old Trio, and where it doesn't, well, there's Sundance.

So now the inevitable has occurred. Today, channel 255 on my cable system is airing MSNBC, and Trio is officially off the air. But it lives on as Trio Plus, a broadband channel that Trio started up a couple of years ago so it could show a really nasty (and, of course, hilarious) cartoon from Trey Parker and Matt Stone called "Princess."

Trio Plus isn't much right now, but that could change. After all, NBC Universal is sitting on a mountain of old TV, and you know it's just a matter of time before they follow in Time Warner's footsteps and start offering boatloads of it for video streaming. Right now, Trio Plus is featuring -- under its aptly named "Brilliant But Cancelled" banner -- a two-and-a-half-minute preview of "EZ Streets," which aired ever so briefly on CBS in 1996 and 1997. I wrote at the time: "'EZ Streets' is a show about hard times and the hard choices made by people with few options left in life. It makes us see good in evil people and vice versa, and does so with high purpose."

A show too good for network TV, now streaming for a brand that was too good for cable TV. Brilliant.

Update: Trio gave way to Sleuth, which will retread old NBC and Universal detective shows.