New York - CBS (NYSE: CBS) said on Monday that its March Madness On Demand video player drew 4.7 million total unique viewers, and streamed 4.9 million total hours of live video during the NCAA men's basketball tournament. The number of unique users was up 164% over last year's 1.8 million, but 2008 was the first year that CBS offered all 63 games of the tournament live online, and without local blackouts.

Basking Ridge, N.J. - Verizon Wireless said on Monday that it will offer an exclusive "mobile underground remix" of "4 Minutes," the first single from Madonna's upcoming album "Hard Candy." The song, which is produced by Timbaland and features Justin Timberlake, will be available to U.S. Verizon customers and European Vodafone customers as a full-song download, ringtone and ringback tone. The album is slated for release on April 28.

San Francisco - The average salary for a U.S. video game industry employee was $73,600, up slightly from 2006's figure of $73,316, according to the results of Game Developer magazine's seventh annual Game Developer Salary Survey. Programmers made an average of $83,383, while game designers averaged $63,649, artist and animators $66,594, and business and marketing positions in the industry averaged $101,848.

London - The Random House Group, Bertelsmann's publishing arm, on Monday announced the launch of a new Web widget that lets consumers browse and search through selections of books. The customizable widget, which will appear on sites for book wholesalers Gardners and other sites, also lets consumers purchase books directly via a "Buy Now" button. Sites featuring the widget will contain the words "Open the Book" at the top of each book's cover art.

Arlington, Va. - Caroline Little has resigned as the publisher and CEO of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive (WPNI), the online publishing arm of The Washington Post, the Post reported. The news comes two months after Katharine Weymouth was named the CEO of Washington Post Media, a new unit of the company that oversees both the newspaper and washingtonpost.com. WPNI operates washingtonpost.com, newsweek.com, Slate and Budget Travel Online, as well as other sites.

New York - Digital music service eMusic said on Monday that it has now sold more than 200 million downloads since establishing its current subscription model in November 2003, and is currently selling more than 7 million tracks a month across all territories. The company counts over 400,000 subscribers, and claims to be the world's second-largest download service, behind iTunes.

New York - CBS's (NYSE: CBS) social music discovery service Last.fm said on Monday that it will offer an exclusive preview of Portishead's new album, "Third," in its entirety for free on its site for a week before its official release on April 21.

New York - Ad-supported music service SpiralFrog said on Monday that it has signed a licensing deal with RoyaltyShare, a provider of royalty collection and distribution services. Under the terms, RoyaltyShare customers will be offered the ability to deliver tracks directly to SpiralFrog's service.

New York - Gawker Media, the blog network that includes Gawker, Defamer, Gizmodo, Wonkette and Jezebel, announced on Monday that is selling its Idolator, Gridskipper and Wonkette sites. "To be blunt: they each had their editorial successes; but someone else will have better luck selling the advertising than we did," Gawker Media founder and publisher Nick Denton said in a post on Gawker.com.

Stanford, Calif. - A federal court in New York on Monday heard arguments from Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, who along with Warner Bros. (NYSE: TWX) has filed suit to prevent the publication of a reference guide to the series, claiming its creator has stolen her work. The defendant, RDR Books, argued that its print version of "The Harry Potter Lexicon," based on school librarian and Harry Potter fan Steven Vander Ark's Web resource of the same name, is a legal "fair use" or Rowling's works.

New York - Visible World, a provider of targeted video advertising services, has raised $25 million in a third round of funding led by Adams Street Partners and AllianceBernstein, MediaPost reports.

Website operators who allow the posting of user-generated content on their sites enjoy broad immunity from legal liability. This includes immunity from copyright violations if the site owner registers with the Copyright Office, does not encourage the copyright violations and takes down infringing content upon receiving notice from a copyright owner (see our post here for more information). There is also broad immunity from liability for other legal violations that may occur within user-generated content.

New York - AOL (NYSE: TWX) on Monday announced the largest win in the brief history of Platform-A, which has been tapped to manage all of the online ad and most of the mobile ad inventory of telecommunications giant Verizon (NYSE: VZ). The deal comes as AOL reportedly is continuing discussions about a possible combination with Yahoo (NASD: YHOO), which is trying to fend off a takeover by Microsoft (NASD: MSFT).

Richmond, Va. - In an aggressive move to expand beyond movie rentals, Blockbuster (NYSE: BBI) on Monday said that it has made an unsolicited $1 billion takeover bid for Circuit City Stores (NYSE: CC), the Virginia-based nationwide electronics retailer. Blockbuster said that it originally made the offer two months ago in a letter to Philip Schoonover, the chairman and CEO of Circuit City, but decided to make the news public because it "believes the shareholders of Circuit City should have the opportunity to participate in determining the destiny of the company."

On Wednesday, everyone that is heading out to the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in two weeks received the news of a surprise addition to the line-up – Prince. Coachella is always surrounded by rumors about the line-up and potential to almost impossible reunions, such as The Smiths, before the official announcements are made in January. Every year, fans debate and dispel rumors regarding which bands & artists will play the festival out in Indio, CA on blogs, message boards, and MySpace.

San Jose, Calif. - MediaXstream, a provider of file transfer and file sharing services for the film and TV production industry, announced on Monday that it has acquired Secure Media Solutions, a provider of production applications for the film and TV industry.

Los Angeles - LiveUniverse, the online entertainment network led by Brad Greenspan, the founder of original MySpace parent company Intermix Media, has acquired free personal home page creation service Pageflakes for an undisclosed sum, TechCrunch reports.