— Bebo Beat: The social media site was pressing its latest “Bebo Original” video commission like crazy on Wednesday, after the exit of its president Joanna Shields. Premiering June 19 for 13 weeks and made by Endemol, Bebo Beat will be a daily show showing off musical talent from across Bebo’s network. It’s high on viewer participation, right down to auditioning users to be a co-presenter. Each production is sponsored by a brand – this one by Samsung, which has a Beat series of mobile phones.
— Blinkx/Fox: The video search index is ingesting another partner – this time, 1,000 sports clips from MSN.FoxSports.com‘s FoxWire service. Release.
— BBC comedy: Auntie has commissioned RDF to produce a short, online-only series for its comedy website. The BBC has commissioned the UK’s RDF Television to produce an exclusive shortform series for its new comedy website. Lee & Robbie will go online this autumn, running for five, three-minute episodes. Via C21.
— MuZu/WMG: The Dublin-based music vids site, just one of many in the space, has now got its fourth major aboard. Warner Music UK and MuZu will split sales of ads placed on top of WMG vids. WMG will begin to use MuZu as a video player on its own site and to promote new video releases.
— Boyle on Virgin: Susan Boyle’s semi-final performance was accidentally blacked out by Virgin Media’s otherwise popular VOD catch-up TV service, Edinburgh’s Evening News reports. All was well until the singer showed up; audio continued but the screen went black.
— Pact/IPA: Indie TV producers’ umbrella Pact and the Institute for Practitioners in Advertising want the government to initiate a “digital rights framework” that would allow new media producers to resell the work they make for publicly-funded bodies. In their Digital Britain submission, they say the UK government spends £300 million on new media content but the rights are hardly ever re-used. They want to see a framework like that Pact already operates with BBC.co.uk.