While it won’t move the needle much on its content library, IFC Entertainment announced yesterday that it will offer 53 films through Netflix’s Watch Instantly streaming service, reports Variety.

True, that’s not a very large number, but it marks the first time IFC is providing its content to a subscription streaming service. Up until now, the company has placed films from its 300-title library on EST destinations like Amazon, iTunes and Blockbuster.

IFC titles heading to Netflix’s streaming service include Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line and John Sayles’ Return of the Secaucus Seven.

As we’ve written before, Netflix’s Achilles’ heel is its streaming content library. Though it has over 17,000 titles, it needs to make sure that service is robust enough so that the number of subscribers using the service keeps growing. Check out Om’s recent talk with Netflix CEO Reed Hastings at our recent NewTeeVee Live Conference for more on his company’s streaming efforts.

Separately, though we didn’t see anything official announced, it looks like Netflix also just got a whole boatload of Saturday Night Live content in this week, including seasons 1 – 5.

To learn more about streaming directly to TVs, check out the report on The Evolution of Over-the-Top Video over at our subscription research service, GigaOM Pro.

BBC Gives Technical Details of Its New iPlayer On the Wii; the U.K. broadcaster has encoded streams using H.264 at a 700 kbps bit rate, compared to 1.5 Mbps for regular TV or even 3.2 Mbps for HD. (BBC) Speaking of British TV, the U.K. version of YouTube debuted its new site section that hosts roughly 4,000 full-length programs. (Variety)

Silverlight 4 Beta Launches for Developers; new features include out-of-browser capabilities, advanced business application development, and native multicast and offline DRM support for video. (Ars Technica)

Sony Announces Plans for Digital Media Store; new Sony Online Service will sell music, movies, books, and other downloadable applications for mobile devices. (BusinessWeek)

Disney Launches Its First Branded Entertainment Channel; “The Possibility Shop” will be exclusively sponsored by Clorox and promote Clorox products. (Ad Age)

Blu-ray, DVD Sales Expected to Stabilize in 2010; high-definition Blu-ray DVD sales have yet to make up for the decline in standard def DVD sales in 2009. (Video Business)

Digiboo Does Partnership with Movie Gallery; deal will put 100 Digiboo movie kiosks (see previous coverage) in retail locations. (Video Business)

Grey’s Anatomy Gets a Web Spin-Off; Seattle Grace: On Call will be a six episode run that’s on immediately after Grey’s is aired. (The Hollywood Reporter)

Questions about the overall user experience could get in the way of mass adoption of TV Everywhere-type services, a panel of TV executives told audiences at today’s Future of Television conference in New York.

While panelists agreed that there is a great opportunity for broadcasters and cable programmers to profit off the availability of broadband video services tied to users’ cable subscriptions, most believed that the success of such services would depend on companies’ execution in rolling them out.

“The biggest risk to the industry is if it’s not done well,” said Dave Evans, senior vice president of broadband for Cablevision’s Rainbow Media Holdings. “If it’s not done well, consumers won’t use it.”

The biggest questions revolve around the overall ease of use for the service, which could hamper adoption if users find it too difficult to authenticate with their ISPs or are unable to reach content that they should have access to.

“The opportunity is there, and it’s real, and it’s something to get behind. The biggest challenge is that it’s got to be a solution that offers a very easy and compelling user experience,” said J.B. Perrette, president of digital distribution for NBC Universal.

But with so many players involved in creating these services, and so many platforms to extend these services to, execs warned that the complication involved with rolling TV Everywhere out could create issues, particularly as competitors try to create differentiated experiences that could be confusing to consumers.

“We have to be careful that the competitive nature of this ecosystem doesn’t create an issue,” Perrette said.

Other issues remain, such as a lack of standards and agreement about how to measure audiences watching programs on TV, online or on mobile devices. The measurement issue in particular could hamper content companies’ ability to effectively sell advertising across multiple platforms.

“I think that ratings and the ability to have customer insight is a critical piece of the equation,” said Kelly Day, executive vice president and COO of digital media and commerce for Discovery Communications. Later, she reiterated that the measurement agencies have a lot of work to do to measure across multiple different audiences “We don’t think Nielsen is moving fast enough to count TV, VOD and online [together],” she said. (To learn more about Nielsen’s measurement of TV Everywhere, check out the ratings company’s presentation at the recent NewTeeVee Live.)

Murali Nemani, director of service provider video marketing for Cisco, pointed out that technology already exists to measure user engagement directly from the set-top box, and that his company and others were working to extend that intelligence into the network and other devices.

But, he said, “Technology is only as good as the fundamental business models that can support it. The big challenge for us is, how do we look at the ecosystem and talk about how value is being created by technology to enable a rich consumer experience? Content will continue to proliferate across different ecosystems. The question is what is the model under which these new business models can emerge?”

To learn all you need to know about TV Everywhere, check out our Ultimate Guide to TV Everywhere, now available on GigaOM Pro.

Vevo, the forthcoming music video site from Universal and Sony Music and powered by YouTube, announced via Twitter this afternoon that it is officially launching on Tues. Dec. 8th. Here’s a screen grab of the Tweet:

The only thing missing from Vevo’s Twitter post was a “suck it, Hulu!” (it still would have still been under 140 characters). Last night Hulu announced it was getting into the music video game in a very minimal way with a limited distribution deal with EMI, kicking off with a Norah Jones music video section.

NBC Launches Social ‘Communicator’ Tool; new ad-supported application allows users to watch full-length episodes of NBC programming, with built-in texting and unlimited VOIP calls. (paidContent)

CBS High School Sports Site Inks Deal With Comcast; MaxPreps.com will produce hundreds of short-form video features on local high school sports teams for Comcast’s Houston affiliate. (MediaPost)

Fliqz Launches Video SEO Product; new SearchSuccess tools will be sold as an add-on to the company’s Gold Edition hosting solution. (FierceOnlineVideo)

ABC News Partners With Ustream for Nightline Twittercast; anchors and correspondents from the show will participate in a half-hour web program once a week streamed by Ustream. (emailed release)

Cox Tests Dynamic VOD Ads With NBCU; the companies will dynamically insert ads against episodes of The Office and Monk that are viewed on Cox’s MyPrimetime video-on-demand service. (Multichannel News)

Tinychat Launches Ustream Competitor; the new Tinychat.tv service will allow users to share their live video conversations with anyone on the web. (TechCrunch)

Pirate Bay Tracker Really Shutting Down Now; founders want to encourage other BitTorrent sites to move away from torrents. (TorrentFreak)

YouTube has launched a new tool, called YouTube Direct, that aims to connect news organizations with citizen journalists producing web video.

Built on YouTube APIs, the tool will provide an easy way for news agencies to collect and broadcast clips that users submit for review. By adding a customizable upload button to their web pages, those organizations can solicit user-produced videos on a variety of subjects.

YouTube Direct provides another advantage for cash-strapped media companies: Because all videos are hosted on the YouTube site, participating companies don’t have to go through the trouble of building out the infrastructure required to ingest, encode, store and distribute videos that have been uploaded.

Already, YouTube has received interest from news organizations such as The Huffington Post, NPR, Politico, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Washington Post for the service.

NPR, for instance, is soliciting user videos that run from 30 seconds to 3 minutes in length for its crowdsourced WonderScope science series. To participate, users can submit videos directly through NPR’s web site, and those that make the cut will be added to the official NPR YouTube channel.

Meanwhile, Politico is asking its readers to submit clips (2 minutes or less) for Project Politico, a program that encourages debate based on a new question each day.  And the San Francisco Chronicle is using YouTube Direct to solicit videos of street performers throughout the city.

The new service will provide a counter to some existing citizen journalist tools, such as CNN’s iReport. The iReport program, which was initially launched in 2006, took off earlier this year as videos flooded into the news agency detailing the political protests in Iran.

YouTube says it’s not asking for any compensation from companies that use the service, but it is using YouTube Direct as a way to increase the number of videos that are uploaded to the site. The video site also suggests that the service has applications outside of newsgathering.

In a blog post, Steve Grove, YouTube’s head of news and politics, writes:

“Businesses can use YouTube Direct to solicit promotional videos, nonprofits can use the application to call-out for support videos around social campaigns and politicians can use the platform to ask for user-generated political commercials. The opportunities to use the tool are as broad as the media spectrum itself.”

Hulu, the online video joint venture of NBC, Fox and Disney that’s funded by Providence Equity Partners, seems to be having familial issues. No, it’s not YouTube or TV Everywhere giving the second-most popular online video service in the U.S. headaches. Instead, internal bickering is causing problems, MediaWeek reports. This is not the first time Hulu’s parents have undermined the service. But it comes as a surprise — traditional media companies have a long history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Network officials are complaining about Hulu’s sales staff selling against the network’s own sales teams, according to MediaWeek:

“It’s confusing and conflicting, and very muddled,” said Lisa Herdman, vp, director of national programming for RPA, who handles Honda’s online media. Most stop short of accusing Hulu of outright deception but report that its sellers are often not forthcoming about what they can and cannot sell…On the flip side, buyers say that broadcast networks are inconsistent when it comes to selling Hulu avails. “There are a lot of growing pains with the whole scenario,” said Jeff Ratner, digital director, North America, Mindshare Interaction/Maxus. “Hulu has created a legitimate marketplace for online video. Now you are seeing the downside.”

Hulu has succeeded beyond everyone’s expectations, including those of the networks, which three years ago panicked over the rise of YouTube (and Google.) Despite being a big critic of the joint venture — such ventures almost never work out — I eventually changed my mind and ate crow: Hulu is brilliant. In September, 583 million videos were watched on Hulu, making it the second-largest video destination behind YouTube.

The simplicity of its interface and ease of use have made it the darling of American TV fans. If YouTube became an obvious destination to watch video shorts online, Hulu set a standard for the quality of professionally produced video streams. Even Quincy Smith, outgoing CEO of CBS Interactive, who has in the past questioned Hulu’s business model, admits the “service is freakin’ bad-ass and [Hulu CEO] Jason [Kilar] is an extremely great product guy, GM and a guy who can sell.”

Agreed! Kilar has done a good job of delivering a killer product, despite the competing egos and agendas at various networks. But I wonder if Kilar can really keep this whole thing going. Smith, his bombastic views on Hulu aside, is not wrong in his skepticism of the joint venture. During his on-stage conversation with me at our third NewTeeVee Live conference last week, Smith said, “Hulu got extremely successful extremely early, and that might ultimately hurt them.”

“Before you go putting [your content online] in full episodes, you gotta take it to the audience and make sure they know that it’s on this screen,” he said, referring to the need to encourage viewers to watch broadcast television.

Hulu’s owners are pushing the service around “by imposing delayed windows on certain content and allowing just a limited number of episodes available at any given time” — or charging subscription fees. These are Band-Aids. (Related content from GigaOM Pro: “Hulu and the end of Free TV”)

The networks are fighting a losing battle. Why? Because Hulu is only a signpost of things to come. Like YouTube, Hulu is showing the media buyers that there is a smarter, targeted and metric-based approach to buying media on behalf of customers. This is a long-term cyclical shift, and the TV networks will continue to bleed, Hulu or not.

TV advertising has (and continues to be) successful for mass marketing efforts, but even the idea of mass market is going through a big shift. The TV audiences will continue to get divided and subdivided into various niches. Furthermore, the rise of “TV Everywhere,” a way for you to watch cable company-provided video content on the web, is going to eat into the mass market. If the mass market continues to shrivel, then networks will be fighting to get a piece of the shrinking pie. It is no surprise then that the media companies are bickering with their own spawn.

(Related Research: The Ultimate Guide to TV Everywhere, subscription required. Sign up for GigaOM Pro for $79 a year subscription which gives you access for unlimited research.)

Shortly after we learned some more details about Comcast’s TV Everywhere trial yesterday at NewTeeVee Live, Disney CEO Bob Iger said on his company’s earnings call that he believes TV Everywhere solutions should not be offered to consumers for free. Broadcasting & Cable reported on the call yesterday, and here’s a transcript of what Iger said (emphasis ours):

Look, TV Everywhere is maybe an example of what we have talked about often, and that is digital technology providing us with more opportunities to reach consumers and consumers more opportunities to consume our product. And to the extent that TV Everywhere serves consumers better, we are in favor of it. However, when you serve consumers better, when you provide more convenience or more utility, you should be able to charge for that and charge an appropriate amount. And some of what we have heard about TV Everywhere suggests that interest in charging the consumer for greater access is not necessarily a priority and we believe it should be.

We also believe that we should still have the ability if we go to a world where there is authentication and TV everywhere for the multi-channel subscriber, we should not be precluded from offering our product directly to consumers who may not be subscribers to multi-channel services, because we believe that would — and even though there aren’t many of them, that wouldn’t necessarily be good for consumers and while we realize we are trying to serve many masters, the master that is most important to serve for us is the consumer.

We’ve been skeptical that MSOs would offer TV Everywhere for free for very long — operators never pass up the opportunity to add a charge. In this case, we wonder if Iger should be so quick to want people to pay. Yes, there are monetization issues surrounding TV Everywhere plans, but as Comcast Interactive president Amy Banse told us yesterday, we’re in the first inning of this new online video world, there’s a lot about how the service will work and how consumers will use it that’s left to be determined. Prioritizing a fee out of the gate would most likely dissuade people from giving the service a fair shot. Besides, every good pusher knows the first hit’s always free.

Not to pat ourselves on the back, but you know how we know yesterday’s NewTeeVee Live conference was awesome? We’re not exhausted. Typically after an all-day show packed with interviews, on-stage moderating, and shaking hands, you’re pretty wiped out.

But the energy was so great yesterday that we’re just pumped for the year ahead. If you weren’t able to attend, you should check out the video from the day (thanks, Livestream!), but if you’re looking for something faster, here’s a recap of what we learned:

Fireside chats = awesome
We went out on a limb yesterday and built our day around one-on-one chats and short presentations and only had one panel. The result was the ability to have deeper conversations and extract real news from our guests.

Take Comcast’s TV Everywhere To Go
Comcast Interactive president Amy Banse is a charmer who could sell ice to the Eskimos. Talking with her, you literally start thinking “Hey, Comcast isn’t so bad… maybe I should get that triple play package.” While she’s a cagey one, Banse did provide us tasty TV Everywhere nuggets:

• First, it sounds like Comcast’s On Demand Online will be available “by Hanukkah” (which starts Dec. 11).
• You’ll need to download the Move player along with an authentication app, and you can authorize up to three devices in the home.
• Also, contrary to earlier reports — Comcast subscribers will be able to access their On Demand Online content outside the home. So you can fire up your laptop while traveling to catch up on content you may have missed.

YouTube Goes 1080p
If there’s any one thing to show you how far video technology has come, during the first NewTeeVee Live in 2007, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen dismissed HD and said his company wanted to provide video quality that was “good enough.” Fast forward to 2009, now YouTube is playing 1080p video as announced by head of product Hunter Walk during an on-stage interview. This comes less than a year after YouTube switched on HD, and will apply to the site’s whole library of previous uploads of 1080p-quality videos. Walk said about 10 percent of YouTube videos are uploaded in some form of HD, though the percent of views for such videos may be smaller given many people are better served with a smooth lower-quality stream.

Redbox Sees Beyond DVDs
The controversial DVD kiosk company recognizes the DVD won’t be around forever and has already started testing direct digital downloads in some kiosks.

Xbox LIVE Gets Social Next Week
Creating social TV experiences is a big emphasis for Microsoft and Facebook and Twitter will be landing on the platform on Nov. 17.

Boxee Knows How to Get Press
Making the prediction that in five years there will be more Apple subscribers than Comcast subscribers while at a conference where Comcast is speaking is an easy way to grab headlines. Regardless, Boxee still has tongues wagging and that will only increase when it unveils its upcoming mystery box.

Roku is Becoming a Platform (But Still Likes the Hardware Biz)
The company’s Channel Store will be launching imminently, enabling just about anyone to create a channel for the box (and the TV, by extension). But while the company is building a flexible and potentially powerful TV-connected platform, Roku still likes being in the (tough) hardware business and will keep making boxes.

Video Helping PBS Get Hip
PBS is now drawing 26-minute sessions to its video portal, and will soon introduce a version of its site that automatically syndicates local stations’ content.

Adobe Pooh-Poohs Open Video
CTO Kevin Lynch said HTML 5 is trying to do what Flash already does today.

CNN Refocuses Web Video Effort Around Live Events
The network sees more promise in its social TV efforts with Facebook than in linear newscasts, and talked up the live event coverage on the same day it laid off its web news anchors.

VIZIO is the New Fred
Last year, crowds flocked around young YouTube star, Fred. This year it was Matt McRae of Vizio. The head of platforms (i.e. widgets) for the country’s No. 1 TV manufacturer was mobbed after his chat and had to pass through a gauntlet of eager developers looking for a home for their apps.

Thanks to all of our speakers, the rest of the GigaOM Family who furiously liveblogged our talks (newbie Ryan Lawler had a baptism by fire this week!), all of our sponsors and all of you who came out, including a sell-out crowd of 600 to the venue and 12,000 more uniques via the live video stream. See you at NewTeeVee Live 2010!

Just as I got off the stage at NewTeeVee Live with CNN Worldwide VP of Digital Marketing and Development Andy Mitchell, I saw a report that CNN is cutting back on its web video newscasts. The company laid off its four CNN.com Live anchors as well as “several production staffers,” according WebNewser.

CNN.com Live launched as a free service in 2007 to replace the paid web service CNN Pipeline, which failed to gather many subscribers. Up till today, it had its own staff of anchors completely separate from the cable TV channel.

I followed up with Mitchell in the green room to ask about the layoffs, and he said that CNN is in no way pulling away from online video. However, linear, anchor-led broadcasts are more appropriate for television than for the web. He emphasized that CNN.com is all about web video, citing its recent redesign.

Mitchell said CNN expects to expand its coverage of major live events, which is exactly what we’d just been talking about onstage. A memo obtained by WebNewser said CNN expects to hire seven original video production staff by the end of the year.

When I interviewed him along with Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg this afternoon, Mitchell said to expect a major collaboration between the two companies next year around an event they hope will rival the success of the Obama inauguration, which had 1.3 million simultaneous viewers at peak and 25 million total streams on CNN.com’s live feed accompanied by Facebook status messages. He and Zuckerberg declined to provide further details about the project.

Nov. 11 is not a good date for Current TV employees. For the second year in a row, the network/web site hybrid Al Gore built has announced layoffs on that day in the double digits. But while last year, the eliminated jobs were attributed to “a new cross-platform programming strategy,” the bulk of today’s 80 lost jobs are directly tied to the cancellation of Current Tonight, Current Takeover and Current Exposed.

The canceled shows were part of a change in strategy for Current following the hiring of new CEO Mark Rosenthal, according to COO Joanna Drake Earl. “We had a chance to step back to see what’s working and what’s not,” she said via phone, “which led to the decision to move away from an over-reliance on short-form content.”

The layoffs will allow the company to reinvest in programming, marketing and affiliate sales hiring, areas where Earl admitted Current is looking for “more experienced leadership,” as well as invest more in longer-form shows like Infomania and The Rotten Tomatoes Show, both of which she described as successes.

When it comes to finding ways to make the web and TV play nice together, Current has always been an innovator, whether being one of the first to incorporate Twitter updates on news broadcasts or what Earl described as Rotten Tomatoes‘ “low-bar audience participation format.” We’ll just have to see if the next reorganization comes on Nov. 11, 2010.

Sorry, TechCrunch, but Netflix isn’t the bunch of ninnies that you’re making it out to be.

At issue is the possible 30-day delay on new release movies Netflix is willing to accept from Hollywood studios in exchange for lower acquisition costs. According to a Video Business report last week, Netflix has been negotiating with studios to try and get as much as half shaved off the price of films to compensate for the delay in receiving new movies.

Much of TechCrunch’s coverage of the news talks about how a release window will only drive people to piracy. That’s a fair point, but the piece’s characterization of Netflix is a little short-sighted:

What’s really befuddling is that Netflix lacks the vision to see thorough this BS. They don’t seem to realize that longterm it’s going to screw them too. While new movies may not be as core to their business as they are to Redbox (which is suing many of the studios to stop something like this), new movies are the sexy lures that bring in new business.

To be sure, release windows suck from a consumer standpoint. But Netflix hardly lacks vision. On the contrary: It’s losing the DVD battle in order to win the overall streaming war.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has talked about how kiosk-based rentals like those from Redbox are Netflix’s primary competition. Hollywood is split on Redbox and kiosk rental; studios like Sony, Lionsgate and Paramount are for (and are working with) Redbox, while Fox, NBC Universal and Warner Bros. are against it.

The anti-Redbox camp wants to impose a 30-day new release window on Redbox. Redbox relies more on new releases than Netflix, which says that 70 percent of its business comes from its older title business. Kiosks by their nature are smaller and can’t hold a massive library of movies.

Netflix stated in its last earnings call that it was all for a “sales only” window before movies became available for rental. The enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that. If Netflix can push the release window idea and slow down Redbox’s rapid growth with little (apparent) impact on Netflix’s core business, well, why not?

But Netflix’s move extends beyond the physical DVD.

Netflix claims that 42 percent of its 11.1 million subscribers streamed content in the third quarter vs. 22 percent in the same period the year before. Meanwhile, an outside survey found that 54 percent of Netflix subscribers stream at least one movie or TV show per month. So the number of people streaming content is growing.

The problem with Netflix’s current streaming offering is its small content library, and the company has said over and over how it plans to invest more heavily in acquiring titles for streaming. If Netflix can negotiate half off its acquisition of DVDs, it can funnel that money into acquiring content for streaming to bulk up its library as the streaming service expands to more devices.

That doesn’t mean Netflix will suddenly get new releases to stream. The company is sticking with its subscription model instead of an electronic sell-through one, which naturally limits its ability to get newer releases. But if it can create a massive library of on-demand titles and secure more premium content, its subscription streaming offering would become even more compelling and Netflix would maintain a dominant role in the over-the-top video world.

At the end of the day, Hastings is neither stupid nor blind. Perhaps he’ll shed some light on his thinking during his talk at our NewTeeVee Live conference this Thursday.

Many classic sitcoms — Cosby, Roseanne, Seinfeld — were built around a comedian’s standup routine. Today, though, Twitter is the new Chuckle Hut, thanks to CBS’s pick-up of the Twitter account S— My Dad Says (new TV-safe title TBD).

Adapting SMDS as a sitcom makes sense because what creator Justin Halpern does is use each Twitter update as a 140-character character portrait of his father, a man almost Archie Bunker-ish in his crassness — and exactly the sort of modern curmudgeon you can imagine building a sitcom around. The folks developing Texts From Last Night for Fox, meanwhile, have a much tougher gig on their hands, as that site is just a compilation of drunken mistakes. (Funny drunken mistakes, but whatever.)

It’s easy to look at something popular on the Internet and say “Hey, we should exploit that for TV.” But I’ll make my wager now that of these two ideas, it’s SMDS that will actually make it to broadcast — because no amount of Internet buzz can replace a good character and/or story.

ZillionTV Signs Paramount; new films will be available via electronic sell-through, while catalog titles will be available for free with ads. (emailed release)

Fox Adds Second Screen for DVD Interactivity; “FoxPop” will debut on Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian and via a downloadable app; facts about the movie will appear on a laptop or iPhone in sync with and about the movie. (The Hollywood Reporter)

Netflix on the PS3 = Sucky; experience of loading and moving through streamed films are slow, reports one user. (Business Insider)

Microsoft Taking a Multi-Screen Approach to Ads and Games; company putting ads on its Xbox LIVE platform as well as dynamically delivering ads (including video) to breaks built into games. (MediaWeek)

Chase Sponsoring Oprah/CNN Webcast; 90-minute webcast with author Uwem Akpan happening tonight at 9 p.m. (Broadcasting & Cable)

NCR and MOD Systems Begin Technical Trial; kiosks let you download movies to an SD card (see our previous coverage). (emailed release)

Tudou Looks to Mobile, Despite Lagging Chinese 3G; TechCrunch has long wrte-up about the company’s strategy. (TechCrunch)

Comcast’s bid to buy NBC Universal from GE has cleared another hurdle — the price point. The two parties have agreed to a $30 billion price tag for the TV and movie company, sources familiar with the matter tell The Wall Street Journal and Reuters.

The deal would give the cable network a 51 percent stake in the newly combined venture. And the deal could include a stipulation that over the following seven years, GE would sell all or part of its remaining stake in the company to Comcast.

One variable to closing this deal is French media company Vivendi, which has a 20 percent stake in NBCU. Vivendi has been talking about selling its stake for a while, but it’s not clear whether the company has agreed to the deal being negotiated between Comcast and GE.

Comcast is expected to contribute between $4 billion and $6 billion to the venture, but the cash payment would depend on how well NBC performs financially. If NBCU’s financials get worse between the signing of the deal and final closing, Comcast could wind up paying less.

The Journal reports that the final details are being worked out, and we could get an announcement by the end of this week. (We’ve heard that one before.) Getting the regulatory approvals is expected to take eight to 12 months.

My evening reading includes two pieces by Mike Shields of Mediaweek about cable networks’ changing approaches to the web: a looong feature about Fox News’ live Strategy Room program, and a tiny piece about MTV’s success with breaking its content into web-sized snacks.

Fox News’ year-old Strategy Room runs for eight hours on weekdays with a range of colorful hosts and guests, attracting a midday audience interested in more than just political news. Meanwhile, MTV earlier this year started experimenting with catering its content to the headline-driven web, playing up clips and quotes rather than leaving everything full-length.

It strikes me that the numbers don’t even compare. Strategy Room got 28,000 viewers per day in Sept., with a high of 38,000. Meanwhile, MTV News saw nearly 10 million streams in the third quarter, up 88 percent from last year.

However, Strategy Room is doing good for Fox’s image, says Shields; with a more casual and wide-ranging vibe that could help the network with its massive online traffic gap versus its cable news rivals. And anyhow, most of MTV’s views were probably for New Moon clips.