Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates - The Abu Dhabi Media Company, a Middle Eastern media conglomerate formed in 2007 that has interest across publishing, TV, radio and digital media, announced on Wednesday that it will sink more than $1 billion over the next five years into the creation of full-length feature films and digital content. [more..]

McLean, Va. - Gannett, the publisher of USA Today and 84 other daily newspapers, said on Wednesday that it has paid $135 million to Tribune for an additional 10% stake in CareerBuilder, giving the company a controlling interest in the country's largest online job site. [more..]

Englewood, Colo. - Liberty Media announced on Wednesday that it plans to split off its Liberty Entertainment group, which includes the company's stakes in DirecTV, Starz, FUN Technologies, GSN, WildBlue Communications and Liberty Sports, into a separate public company. [more..]

Seattle - Viacom's Paramount Pictures announced that it has acquired Screenlife, the developer of "Scene It?" DVD-based trivia games, for an undisclosed sum. [more..]

Seattle - Online retail giant Amazon.com has launched a new wiki-styled online music database, SoundUnwound, which allows any user to post and update informational, multimedia profiles on musical artists. [more..]

El Segundo, Calif. - Satellite TV provider DirecTV announced on Wednesday that it has expanded its relationship with TiVo, and will jointly develop and distribute a new HD DirecTV DVR with TiVo to its 17.1 million subscribers. [more..]

Tallahassee, Fla. - M-Qube, a unit of VeriSign that aggregates billing services for mobile content distribution, has reached a settlement agreement with Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, over unauthorized ringtone and other mobile content charges to customers' bills. [more..]

London - More than 70% of digital video recorder owners say they cannot live without them, according to a survey of 1,000 DVR owners in the U.S., U.K., Italy and Australia conducted by NDS, a maker of smart cards and other technology for digital pay-TV services. [more..]

New York - DigiMeld, a provider of live and on-demand video streaming services, announced on Wednesday that it has raised a $2 million first round of financing, from unnamed angel investors. [more..]

Yesterday the site’s average visit time was 2 minutes, implying that a significant number of visitors downloaded the application rather than just browsing for information, blogs Hitwise's Robin Goad. [more..]

Bentonville, Ark. - Retail giant Walmart on Wednesday introduced the Walmart Smart Network, an in-store IPTV-based network that it hopes to expand to 27,000 screens in more than 2,700 stores by 2010. [more..]

London - Publisher HarperCollins has launched a social network for aspiring authors, Authonomy.com, where members will be tasked with reading sample chapters and manuscripts with an eye towards discovering new talent, FT.com reports. [more..]

London - We7, an ad-supported online music service, announced that it has added some 400,000 tracks from major label EMI's catalog to its service, to be made available both as ad-funded streams and paid MP3 downloads. [more..]

Espoo, Finland - Nokia on Wednesday began shipping its Nokia N96 multimedia computer, a EUR 550 ($800) handset that features a 2.8-inch display, live mobile TV, 5-megapixel camera, turn-by-turn voice navigation and 16GB of internal memory. [more..]

London - New Stream Media, a provider of digital media broadcasting and distribution services, announced on Wednesday that it has signed licensing deals with all four major labels, for the rights to record and distribute live concerts from London's O2 stadium and indigo2 venues. [more..]

New York - The Orchard, a digital distributor of music and video content, said on Wednesday that it has signed a deal with Musical Heritage Society's MusicMasters label for the rights to distribute rare classical jazz recordings to digital retailers. [more..]

Berlin - 24-7 Entertainment, a provider of branded digital and mobile entertainment distribution services, announced that German retail giant Saturn will be its first European partner to offer major label Universal Music's full digital music catalog in a DRM-free format. [more..]