—Five: The broadcaster is tasking Red Bee Media with managing all its Demand Five VOD services, including transcoding, distribution, syndication, live streaming, content management, metadata and delivery to YouTube, MediaWeek reports. —Spotify priorities: A redesign to its homepage sees the music service flip its priority - where previously it marketed…

Telegraph.co.uk’s sources have been promising the paper Hulu’s imminent UK launch for so long now that, now it’s reporting “further delays” to the U.S. VOD site’s ambitions here, we’re barely inclined to mention it - but anyway… Despite claiming in August that Hulu was in “most advanced discussions” to land…

BBC’s IPTV director Richard Halton now has C4 and TalkTalk to add to his Project Canvas partners BBC, ITV (LSE: ITV), Five and BT (NYSE: BT). The addition of a fifth and sixth partner to the connected-TV EPG scheme means costs to the BBC will fall from the originally forecast…

YouTube UK is now adding long-form shows from Five to those it acquired in October from Channel 4, giving it a big advantage as it ramps up its new Shows section. Five is retaining, within a YouTube channel, “DemandFive”, the name for its VOD strand, which recently got a new…

Broadcaster Five has partnered with VOD site Livestation to offer live streaming of Europa League football via Apple’s iPhone. The £3.99 app launched on Friday allows live viewing of Five’s Thursday-night fixtures, plus highlights, for a one-off fee. The app’s iTunes page says it will work via wifi or 3G…

With 12 months to go before digital TVs and set-top boxes powered by the BBC’s Canvas open IPTV standard are ready for general sale, the project has added DVD rental firm Lovefilm to its list of partners, and talks are on-going with Channel 4 and the UK Film Council. (Correction:…

Interactive TV gaming firm NetPlay TV has signed a deal to provide services to Five, its first UK free-to-air channel partner, and is repeating its tactic of giving away equity options in the bargain. Five is getting an option on a five percent stake in NetPlay - worth £2.8 million…

By Mark Sweney: Five has struck a deal with Sony (NYSE: SNE) that will see shows, including Neighbours and Home and Away, broadcast on a new video-on-demand service available via the electronics giant’s Bravia television sets launching next year.

“Strong increases” in e-book sales in the UK, Germany and the US couldn’t stop book publisher Random House’s January-to-June profits falling 30 percent from last year to €20 million (£17.6 million), as its parent Bertelsmann swung to a big net loss. The German media conglomerate turned last year’s €444 million…

Five is joining ITV (LSE: ITV) and BT (NYSE: BT) in the BBC’s proposed open platform for IPTV VOD over broadband to the living room. CEO Dawn Airey, in the release, says: “Project Canvas is an important step forward because it will extend choice and significantly improve the television experience…

With Project Kangaroo having been canceled, UK TV execs face some interesting choices on their VOD strategies - continue to go it alone, give content to a UK-focused Hulu, adopt iPlayer for free or forgo online in favour of Canvas? Some directors gave their views to Guardian.co.uk...

The UK’s Competition Commission may have outlawed the BBC/ITV/C4 commercial VOD venture Project Kangaroo on antitrust grounds, but there’s still appetite for a grand online TV JV in the UK. Five CEO Dawn Airey says broadcasters here are “staring into the abyss” if they don’t form a Hulu-like alliance, according…

—Five Cricket VOD: Five’s highlights from this summer’s Ashes Test series will be shown online via its Demand Five VOD platform—and the Publicis-owned Zenith Optimedia agency has bought up all the ad inventory surrounding it and a new cricket mini-site. Each 45-minute highlights show will go online from 10pm each…

—Warner Bros-Blinkbox: London-based VOD site Blinkbox has signed a deal to add Warner Bros movies to its streaming service on a paid-for basis. Already a Blinkbox partner, Warner now adds more than 1,100 films and TV shows both new and old, with prices for movies around the £2.19 mark. The…

US video site Metacafe is about to launch in the UK, having hired Joost‘s London-based content acquisition and strategy director Tim Rottach to build its operation here. Rottach told me he will use the ad sales service from Perform Group as well the sports video rightsholder’s content, giving Metacafe football…

—We7 on mobile: The free, ad-funded music player is entering the mobile space with an iPhone app nearing completion and Android and Blackberry versions on the way. Via Billboard.biz —Five’s gaming site: RTL-owned Five is to launch a “premium” casino and bingo site in partnership with Party Gaming in H209.…

It’s taken a while, but broadcasters, online publishers and advertisers could be close to agreeing a standardised system to measure online video viewing. The Broadband Measurement Working Group, a coalition of broadcasters, ISPs and measurement bodies, is to start testing a new measurement metric next month, 18 months after starting…

After slashing the value of its RTL-owned broadcaster Five, German media group Bertelsmann’s saw its annual net profit slump by one third to €270 million (£250.2 million) in 2008. After writing off €337 million (£312 million) off Five’s value earlier this month, Bertelsmann also made similar “value adjustments” at RTL’s…

Update: Five has been in touch to say that the digital media division will be a “client” of the new creative unit but will remain a separate department. Five’s commercial partnerships unit, which handles licensing and competitions, will merge with the digital division. Five can’t put a number on how…