Washington - The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday voted to delay the national transition to digital TV broadcasting by four months, to give consumers who will be affected more time to prepare. [more..]

Los Angeles - Concert giant Ticketmaster is close to a negotiating an merger deal with concert promoter Live Nation -- which is preparing to launch its own rival ticketing service -- the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. [more..]

Washington - The heads of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees on Wednesday introduced the Performance Rights Act, bipartisan legislation that would remove traditional radio's exemption from paying performers in addition to songwriters, which is not the case for satellite or Internet radio, or for many foreign broadcasters. [more..]

Mountain View, Calif. - Google on Wednesday introduced a new feature for its Maps service, Google Latitude, that can identify where users are located geographically based on data from their mobile devices. [more..]

London - Kangaroo, a proposed online video-on-demand joint venture between U.K. broadcasters BBC, ITV and Channel 4, has been effectively killed by U.K. antitrust regulators, PaidContent reported. [more..]

Washington - Seven technology firms, including Google, Microsoft and Motorola, on Wednesday announced the formation of the White Space Database Group, which will facilitate the timely creation of a white spaces database to govern the use of vacant television broadband spectrum. [more..]

Frankfurt, Germany - German video game publisher Crytek announced on Wednesday that it has acquired U.K.-based developer Free Radical, creators of the "Timesplitters" series. [more..]

Los Angeles - GameFly, the operator of a subscription-based video game rental service, announced on Wednesday that it has acquired Shacknews, which operates a game news site of the same name and a game-related downloads site, FileShack.com. [more..]

New York - Alloy Media and Marketing, a youth-focused network of websites that claims a total audience of over 20 million, announced on Wednesday that it has acquired Takkle.com, an online resource and college recruitment website for high school sports. [more..]

San Francisco - iWidgets, a provider of social media and portal syndication services for publishers, announced on Wednesday that it has raised $4.1 million in first round funding, led by Opus Capital and University Venture Fund.
[more..]

Seattle - Mixpo, a developer of online video advertising technology, has raised $4 million in its second round of venture capital financing, led by Madrona Venture Group, VentureBeat reported. [more..]

What to do? Iger's answer is to take as much cost out of the DVD business as possible, like expensive extras and distribution expenses, blogs Paul Sweeting. [more..]

Now visitors aged 25 to 34 make up the largest share of visits with 27%, with 18 to 24 and 35 to 44 closely following with respective shares of 24% and 23%, blogs Heather Dougherty. [more..]

Paris - French mobile network operator Orange has lost a legal bid to reinstate its exclusive deal to distribute Apple's iPhone in the country, Reuters reported. [more..]

Redmond, Wash. - Microsoft announced on Wednesday that it has partnered with MEAN Magazine to produce an original, ad-supported digital series. [more..]

San Francisco - Slide, a developer of social media applications, and actor Ashton Kutcher's Katalyst Media production company, on Wednesday announced a partnership that will see Katalyst's new original Web series, "KatalystHQ," air exclusively on Slide's FunSpace. [more..]

San Mateo, Calif. - Jaman.com, an online video-on-demand service said on Wednesday that it has added nearly 3,000 new titles to its service through a deal with independent video distributor E1 Entertainment. [more..]