My first corporate job—in the mid-1970s working in employee communications for ARCO—was a revelation. After working in newspapers for a couple years with their limited resources, seeing the tools available to a Fortune 20 company was enough to make you drool. For example, ARCO had a complete video studio. Later, the studio was abandoned as it became easier to outsource video work. But now, as video becomes more and more common on the web, you have to wonder when companies will begin beefing up their in-house video production capabilities.

A study from In-Stat (reported by ClickZ Stats), indicates consumption of online video is just getting started. “Online Content Aggregators—AOL, Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Apple—Slowly Defining the Future of Television” suggests the global market for online content will grow by a factor of 10 to over 131 million homes by 2010. Demand for online video is actually driving broadband adoption, according to the study, which projects 413 million homes will have broadband by the end of the decade, compared to 194 million today. Nearly 13% of all broadband households are consuming professionally-produced video.

Businesses by and large consider online video optional, but it’s important to consider that a company’s website is part of the greater web environment. People who grow accustomed to finding video everywhere will wonder about antiquated corporate sites populated mostly by text and pictures. Of course, given the availability of low-cost video cameras and inexpensive computer-based editing applications, in-house studios won’t cost anywhere near what they did in 1977. Companies should be gearing up to make more of their content available as something to watch, which is easier that online reading anyway.