Don't forget that this was the era when Fox also cancelled Family Guy and Futurama. Both of these series were able to be resurrected due to their DVD sales and syndication numbers. Fox made a lot of mistakes during that time, but were just learning about the secondary sales potential for their shows. I'd like to think that a similar set of shows would be able to stick around longer now. Those shows were able to be resurrected easily because they are animated. Firefly, not so much. But another show (Arrested Development) cancelled by Fox in that era is getting resurrected by Netflix, which while not straight to consumer is more direct than through the studios.

Also, Joss Whedon (and the rest of Hollywood) I think learned a lot about distributing directly to the consumer with Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog. I think that this grand experiment was a good template for future direct-to-consumer productions.

Unfortunately, you still have to deal with the problems of initially funding large movies. I can imagine a system where instead of having dedicated studios, you have smaller one-off production companies. These companies would then be funded VC style by funds that seek to mitigate their risk by diversifying their pool of movies. You could fund a few flops, so long as every now and again an Avatar comes along.