From PCUK: The BBC is “actively pursuing” partnerships with more TV platform operators to carry its iPlayer service. Amongst a gamut of sneak previews and hints to the corporation’s 2008 online direction given at C21’s FutureMedia conference at the Bafta headquarters in London, BBC future media and technology controller Erik Huggers showed a demo of the Virgin Media (NSDQ: VMED) version of iPlayer, due to go live next year including “SMS-style” program searching…

“The next step in the evolution is going to be iPlayer on television,” Huggers said. “2008 will be the year when we start to find out how programming is going to get in to the living room. We want to make sure that iPlayer becomes available on more platforms than just Virgin - we’re very interested in partnering with the industry.” Available programming will “dramatically increase” to 800 hours. Huggers also showed the advertising campaign the BBC will run for iPlayer on Christmas Day. This is another first preview…lots more on paidContent:UK, here.