Earlier this week Oprah took to the internet for a live classroom-style discussion with author Eckhart Tolle about his book A New Earth. Over 500,000 people went online at the same time on Monday evening to watch, and over 242 Gbps of information was transferred (according to Harpo Productions, Oprah's company). Using High Quality Video on Skype, several participants were able to ask questions and speak directly with Oprah and Eckhart.

Having so many people connected to the same streaming video did lead to some (non-Skype-related) technical difficulties (which Howard mentioned on the new Skype US blog)--hopefully they'll be sorted out quickly as the webinar series is scheduled to run for 9 more week (every Monday at 21:00 EST / 02:00 GMT). You can learn more about the series here, and watch or download the first lesson here (though beware: the iPod-formatted download clocks in at over a gigabyte). It's also on iTunes.

This isn't the first time that Skype's been used in a 'television-related' capacity. It's been used in Canada for CityTV and the CBC, in Germany, in Brazil, and in the US for Tom Green's show.

If you're a budding broadcaster, check out these excellent tips for getting great audio quality out of Skype during interviews from Doug Kaye and Paul Figgiani of The Conversations Network.