— Radio iPlayer/Canvas?: The BBC is extending its partnership proposals to online radio catch-up. Auntie is already offering to share iPlayer with other TV broadcasters and inviting others to add their VOD, TV and interactive services to a common IPTV standard under Project Canvas. Now Guardian.co.uk reports commercial radio umbrella Radio Centre has welcomed a BBC plan to channel radio providers through a single online service. The proposal could extend to a “Radio Plus” feature, offering catch-up, pre-booking and pausing of live radio. Listen-again radio services got 1.8 million weekly listeners last April and May, Rajar said last year. BBC already routes its live and on-demand radio via iPlayer.
— ITV/Twitter: ITV (LSE: ITV) will lay a live Twitter feed beneath an online broadcast of its Primeval sci-fi drama, due for its season three premiere on March 28. There’s a lot of potential for viewer interaction during TV shows – the Current channel fed Twitter comments on to its Obama inauguration coverage; but ITV will keep the feed for an online simulcast only, as it tries to drive audiences to ITV.com It will also show seven minutes of the first Primeval episode online two days before TV transmission. Release.
— Blinkx: The London- and San Francisco-based video aggregator has done a deal to start indexing the BBC’s video content. Blinkx’s search results now include video packages from the BBC News site. At the same time, the company has got deals to index CBS (NYSE: CBS) and Weather Channel videos. Release.
— BT 40Mbps: Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London and a couple of rural areas will be the first areas to get 40Mbps from BT (NYSE: BT). Its Openreach infrastructure unit unveiled the locations as the first to benefit from its fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) roll-out, due 2010. The first tranche will see 29 exchanges enabled in the cities, as well as in Calder Valley in West Yorkshire and Taff’s Well in Rhondda Cynon Taff. FTTC will replace copper wire with fibre optic cable, between the exchanges and street-side cabinets. BT’s FTTC is currently being piloted in London’s Muswell Hill and Cardiff’s Whitchurch areas. Via Seek Broadband.