—The Onion Newspaper is bringing its satirical brand of news to video in late March, when it will launch The Onion News Network. The service that will stream original clips every week produced by a team of 15 new hires, including an entire production team. The Onion News Network will encourage bloggers to embed clips on their own pages, in hopes of expanding its audience further. Original footage is based on the premise that the paper has been running a 24-hour news service for the past 75 years, only no one knew about it. Clips will cover the past seven decades, as well as current events.
—NBC.com plans to stream the TV network’s upcoming new mid-season primetime series: The Black Donnellys, Andy Barker, P.I. and Raines. In addition, the network stream all produced episodes of Andy Barker as well as the Raines pilot before their broadcast dates. The site also will have bonus episodes of Donnellys and Barker special “web-exclusives.”
—Virgin signs VOD deal with Warner: Virgin Media has struck a content deal with Warner Bros. covering VOD rights to more than 500 hours of programming, including such shows as Friends, The OC and The West Wing. Virgin claims is its biggest program supply deal to date. The shows will be available on-demand via the company’s new channel, Virgin Central.
—Yahoo News to tilt to a lilt : Yahoo plans to launch a video project called Odd News Underground before the end of this quarter that will feature a journalist-cum-crooner who will sing the news. The singing anchor is the first venture from Yahoo News since the last year’s launch of The Hot Zone With Kevin Sites, which chronicles the correspondent’s travels to war-torn areas around the globe. It also is one of the few programming initiatives Yahoo has mounted since a December’s company reorganization that led key content execs including Lloyd Braun and David Katz to leave.
—Verizon Expands Revver Carriage: Verizon’s FiOS TV service will begin carrying user-generated content from online video sharing site Revver. The free Revver on-demand content, which will first launch on Verizon’s Surround broadband entertainment portal by the end of the first quarter, will be integrated into FiOS TV’s new interactive program guide. The companies already had a mobile deal.
—IFC is now the fourth studio to sell movies through Apple’s iTunes store; like Paramount and Lionsgate before them, the Rainbow Media company will sell flicks for $9.99 only when they are in the DVD library window, because Apple’s pricing for new releases conflicts with the wholesale price for DVDs. Disney, in which Apple CEO Steve Jobs is the biggest individual shareholder, is the only studio selling new DVD releases on iTunes.
—Open source software company Azureus said it has struck a partnership with National Geographic Ventures to offer a variety of short- and long form fact-based programming online. Azureus is generally known as a provider of P2P applications for the transfer of large files. Programming from National Geographic Ventures will be available on Azureus’ digital media platform currently code named Zudeo.
—Reversing the trend of bringing branded TV programming to the internet, Comedy Central is bringing original web shows to late-night TV. Dubbed Web Shows, the half-hour weekly series mixes animation, live-action narrative and comedy programming from Comedy Central’s website, Motherload. The network has ordered six episodes.