—BSkyB—Virgin Media: BSkyB (NYSE: BSY) could be looking to bolster its digital TV portfolio by splashing out on seven channels from its close pay TV rival Virgin Media: according to FT.com, Sky is offering a so-far unbeaten £160 million for VMED’s VMtv content division, including Living and Bravo. VMED has been considering selling the VMtv division for months and a sell-off looked especially likely after the sale of its shopping channel business Sell-off TV and the exit of content division CEO Malcolm Wall. Sky’s bid is thought to be well above the money offered by other interested parties, including Channel 4, Five owner RTL, and Time Warner (NYSE: TWX). VMED and Sky only patched up a bitter row last year over offering access to each others’ digital channels—the resultant deal made Virgin pay Sky £38 million a year for the carriage of channels such as Sky News.

—EMI-Terra Firma: After writing off half the value of its €2.6 million (£2.27 million) investment in EMI, Guy Hands’ private equity house Terra Firma has now been forced to plough another big cash injection into the major label after it failed to reach targets set in its banking covenants. FT.com reports, citing unnamed sources, Terra Firma injected £28 million into EMI in March and that another payment is imminent—despite improved 2008 results that saw pre-tax profit rise from £51 million in 2007 to £163 million due to severe cost-cutting (though the unaudited accounts didn’t show the real cost of those cuts). FT.com suggests those earnings were not compliant with the debt-to-profit ratio set by Citigroup, which loaned the company £2.6 billion as part of the PE takeover in 2007.

—National Readership Survey: The paradox continues: as sales of UK newspapers continue to go south—the only risers propped up by aggressive price cutting, expensive giveaways, ad campaigns or all three—newspaper readership appears to be on the up. The six-monthly National Readership Survey shows that all 13 mainstream national newspapers increased their readership year on year during 2008 and that an average of 21.2 million British people read at least one newspaper a day last year. NRS data should be treated with caution: the survey has no stable sample base which makes period-on-period comparisons unreliable. But again the survey strongly suggests that more people are sharing fewer copies of the dead-tree media.

—Dawson News: Hard times for the printed newspaper and magazine distributor Dawson News: as expected, the company today confirms that its £65 million contract with Trinity Mirror (LSE: TNI) will not be renewed when it expires at the end of the year. That follows the loss of contracts with Comag, Telegraph Media Group and and Associated Newspapers. The company also today announce an operating loss of £16.7 million for the 26 weeks to April. Release.