Arlington, Va. - PBS.org, the website of PBS, saw a 25% jump in site visits during the 2007-08 television season, compared with the prior year, according to new statistics released by Internet measurement service Hitwise. The site, in fact, finished third among the six commercial broadcast network web sites, drawing 18.9% of U.S. visits to trail only ABC and NBC. It led all six in visits for the weeks ending May 31, June 7, 14 and 21.

Tokyo - Sony Computer Entertainment this week announced plans to launch its long-awaited movie and TV download service for the PlayStation 3 in the U.S. this summer, although "insiders at numerous studios" told Variety that they have not signed deals to license their content to such a service. Along with downloads directly to the PS3, sources involved in the discussions told Variety the deals could include transfers to the PSP handheld, and transfers from Blu-ray movie discs to the PS3 and PSP. The company has been working on the service since 2006.

Seattle - Coffeehouse chain Starbucks (NASD: SBUX) has decided to further withdraw from the music business, and will reduce the number of CDs it sells in its stores by removing rotating CD racks in favor of showcasing just four album titles near store cash registers, the Seattle Times reported. "It's an opportunity to focus on a small number of titles and tell those stories well," Starbucks spokesman Doug Cavarocchi told the Times. The company also recently opted to shift management of its Hear Music joint venture record label to partner Concord Music Group.

New York - The National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM), a trade group that includes U.S. brick-and-mortar music retailers, this week issued a statement urging parity in physical and digital album release dates. "If not, the Board feels we are opening the door for chaos in the marketplace as the significance of street date becomes meaningless and its competitive benefits are lost," the group said. "Over the past few months, there have been instances where release dates for physical and digital versions of albums did not coincide, creating unnecessary and unwelcome marketing obstacles, consumer confusion and, most importantly, missed sales opportunities."

New York - Viacom's (NYSE: VIA) MTVN Entertainment Group announced this week the launch of Atom.com, a re-imagined version of its AtomFilms unit as a digital comedy network that will partner with the company's Comedy Central network to distribute original programming across digital platforms. Atom.com will also produce a half-hour series, "Atom TV," that had its premiere on Comedy Central this week.

Reston, Va. - Americans conducted nearly 7 million Internet searches for the Apple iPhone in April, according to new figures from Reston-based comScore. The influx came as the Silicon Valley company introduced its newest version of the popular device on June 9. "Search is frequently a harbinger of purchase intent," said Dan Lackner, a senior vice president at comScore. "The increase in volume of iPhone searches demonstrates just how heavy that interest has been for the next generation of Apple's (NASD: AAPL) popular phone -- even when its existence was still just a rumor." The most common search term, "iPhone," generated nearly 1.5 million searches, with "iPhone update" (151,000), "iPhone 2.0" (75,000) and "iPhone 3G" (60,000) also drawing large numbers.

San Francisco - Online social network Facebook will begin asking members to declare their gender as "male" or "female," in order to fix bugs in both English and other languages that caused grammatical errors in automated messages when the system was forced to improvise for the lack of an official pronoun, Reuters reported. Currently, the default in these cases is to use "they" or "themself," although in some languages the plural is always one gender. However, any Facebook users who choose not to define themselves by either gender will be able to opt-out. "We've received pushback in the past from groups that find the male/female distinction too limiting," Facebook product manager Gleit told Reuters.

San Bruno, Calif. - Google's (NASD: GOOG) YouTube has announced the launch of its Partner Program in France and Germany, where the most popular users will now be able to share in the ad revenue the site generates from the videos they post. The program is now available in a total of eight countries.

Los Angeles - Web video content producer and syndicator 60Frames Entertainment said this week that it has signed a deal with comic publisher Oni Press, to produce a Web series based on current and forthcoming titles. The first Oni titles that will become Web series will be "Ark" and "Men With Guns: Assassin," scheduled to debut in 2009.

London - A licensed peer-to-peer music file-sharing service is expected to launch in the U.K. by early next year, a market reaction to government pressure and the threat of legislation that would compel Internet service providers and the music industry to collaborate, The Register reported, citing music industry sources.

Portland, Ore. - A federal judge has awarded an Oregon woman $107,834 in attorneys' fees to compensate for her expenses in a file-sharing copyright lawsuit that the record labels eventually dropped. The attorney for exonerated defendant Tanya Andersen had sought nearly $300,000 in attorneys' fees, while lawyers for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) had argued that that amount was excessive, and instead asked the court to award just $30,000 in fees.

Washington - The U.S. House Subcommittee on the Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property yesterday approved the Performance Rights Act, which would for the first time compel AM and FM radio stations to pay record labels and musicians royalties to play their songs, on top of the current payments to songwriters and music publishers. "A loophole in the law lets AM and FM music radio stations earn $16 billion a year in advertising revenue without compensation the artists and musicians who bring music to life and listeners' ears to the radio dial. It's not right, it's not fair and we are going to make sure it is changed," said Doyle Bartlett, executive director of the MusicFIRST Coalition, a record label lobbying group.

Los Angeles - MySpace founder Brad Greenspan's LiveVideo Network venture this week made a $12.6 million offer for 25% of JumpTV, but the offer was turned down in favor of a previously announced merger agreement between JumpTV and NeuLion, Canada's Globe and Mail reported.

Sunnyvale, Calif. - Shares of Yahoo (NASD: YHOO) slid slightly% on Friday, a day after the company announced a series of organizational changes aimed at bolstering its business.

Santa Clara, Calif. - The Bay Area, combining the three metro areas of San Francisco, San Jose/Silicon Valley and Oakland, had 386,200 high-tech industry workers in 2006, the most of any metro area in the nation, according to AeA's newly released Cybercities 2008 report.

Warren, N.J. - Virgin Mobile USA, the wireless telecom services provider, has signed a deal to acquire Helio, a wireless services joint venture between EarthLink (NASD: ELNK) and SK Telecom, for about $39 million in Virgin Mobile stock. Helio has about 170,000 existing subscribers with an average revenue per user of about $80, and a handset inventory of about 85,000 units with a book value of about $17 million.

San Francisco - Independent animation network aniBoom announced on Friday that it has closed a $10 million second round of venture capital financing.

Palo Alto, Calif. - Moxsie, an online social network centered on the fashion world, has raised over $1 million in its first round of financing, led by Alloy Ventures, PEHub.com reported, citing a regulatory filing.

Vienna, Austria - Xendex, an Austria-based developer of mobile games, announced that it has raised a $3.6 million first round of financing led by Pontis Venture Partners.