If by the end of this year about only 95 percent of the independent video sites left at the end of 2008 have shut down, well, the industry would be lucky. Two more casualties this week: After trying a reorg, layoffs and attempting to sell, ManiaTV has shut down operations, according to Mediawek, citing first-hand sources. This despite its stated intention to sell as soon as last week. The staff was informed of the site's closure on Monday. ManiaTV's core investors, Comerica Bank, chose to eliminate the company's line of credit, both as a result of economic crisis and Mania's own worsening ad business.

Then PluggedIn, an online music video site launched just 11 months ago that had no reason to exist even then, has run out of reasons to continue: It is closing down, according to a report in TC. The site touting HD music videos launched in April last year, with about $2 million in venture funding from Will Smith's entertainment company, Overbrook Entertainment, and others. The company ran out of money after negotiations for a $2.5 million second round fell through at the last second. The company is currently seeking buyers for its technology and team for a price of around $3 million—its cost until now—but I doubt even that could be achieved. Any decent music destination site, especially from bigger sites like Yahoo, MySpace, MTV or YouTube, will eventually add HD, and competing against them on a sliver of a functionality (which, in PluggIn's case, it didn't even own; it was using Move Networks' HD tech) doesn't make a company. And now with music labels talking to each other, and Universal and YouTube talking to each other—in both cases, about all kinds of music video sites—well, goodbye to even more such sites.

So yes, the mania's over in online video, finally…