Spencer Kornhaber at The Atlantic is asking whether House of Cards, the hit series that airs exclusively on Netflix (at least before it eventually hits DVD), is TV. The entire story is well worth reading that delves into the creative process and thoughts about distribution models, but the bigger question never really gets answered: Is it TV?

The short answer is “No.” The longer answer is “No, because…” And here’s where I explain that that “because” unpacks to mean.

Whenever a mass media format has taken off the content and the form factor tend to be called the same thing. I read a newspaper in a newspaper, I watch TV on a TV, I listen to the radio on a radio. But now the content has become irrevocably unhinged from the form factor of the delivery mechanism. I watch long-form video programming on a television set, on a computer screen or on my phone or tablet. And that content increasingly comes through an intermediary that simply wasn’t around 10 years ago like Netflix, iTunes or other provider.

But I don’t watch “television” in the traditional sense because those devices also convey other content. Sure, the programming may have come from a television network, but even then, because of the intermediaries that the content is passed through before it gets to me, those network designations are less and less important. Who needs to know this show was aired on ABC? It shows up on my TiVo or other playlist regardless of channel of origination. Or I search for it by name, not by channel name.

This is the problem I have with things like iTunes Radio. Radio is a device, not a descriptor of the kind of content that’s delivered, which in this case is a series of random music organized by genre or other designation. And it’s delivered on my computer or phone.

I understand the need to use familiar terms to help sell new products and services. But I don’t need my Notes app to look like college-ruled paper and I don’t need a streaming service that is delivered through the interwebs to call itself radio. At some point we’re actually holding back the development of new form factors because we cling to the terminology of the past. Let’s break out and create not just new things, but new names for these new things.