– BT (NYSE: BT) Vision: BT has added some more on-demand content to its IPTV portfolio, this time from the sci-fi and “paranormal” genres. In a deal with Fireworks International, the distribution arm of ContentFilm, BT Vision will offer the sci-fi series Andromeda, Mutant X and Relic Hunter, as well as Monsters, Madness and Mayhem, Real Ghost Stories, and America’s Most Haunted Towns. Subscribers can pay between 79p and 99p for each episode, or get them as part of one of BT’s subscription packages, priced at £6 per month for TV alone or £14 per month for a combination of TV, music, kids and replay packs.
– Mymagonline: Not from the UK but from across the water, Mymagonline, a new Dublin-based company, has launched its website, offering pay-for access to a range of Irish print magazines online. The site partnered with the Periodical Publishers Association of Ireland (PPAI) to gain access to a couple of dozen titles, which are offered in PDF form, giving the lie to Mymagonline’s bold claim it “does for magazine publishing what iTunes has done for music”. Full subscriptions are offered at a variety of price points and readers can download individual copies, too. It’s online distribution for publishers without the inclination to produce web-native content, and it’s due to launch in the UK and other countries in 2008, according to Electric News.
– Newspapers: Sun Online leapfrogged News International stablemate Times Online in August newspaper website popularity, according to latest ABCe returns. Only Sun Online and Telegraph.co.uk added any visitors in the summer month. Guardian Unlimited remains leader (falling from 16 million unique users per month to 15.8 million); Mail Online remains second (sliding from 11.9 million to 11.6 million); Sun Online went from 9.4 million users to 10.6 million; Times Online moved to fourth (from 10.5 million users to 10.2 million); Telegraph.co.uk remained bottom of the five titles which give monthly returns (despite going from 9 million users up to 9.7 million). Press Gazette: “The Times has for the first time released its geographical breakdown for web traffic. The paper says 37.05 percent of its web users are based in the UK, a total of 3.79 million UK users a month. However, UK users account for 57.34 percent of Times Online’s page impressions in August.”