After my first week reporting here, BBC Radio 5 Live interviewed me about Valley sex. Do "geek casanovas" (that's what they called you) have to pay for it? Listen to the archive of the broadcast or download through iTunes for my characteristically delicate response.

BBC and Apple have partnered up to sell BBC programming through the UK iTunes store. [Reuters]

Everyone knows Facebook groups can be made by anyone, are unofficial and unvetted, and don't have any bearing on real-world decisions even within Facebook. I mean, they're below petitiononline.com on the "gives a damn" scale, since the only effort required to "stand up for the cause" is clicking a link to join the group. But in stories like this one from the BBC, reporters don't make that caveat. Treating Internet comments as commensurate to real-world discussion makes sense to lazy reporters: why solicit quotes when they can lift some from a YouTube comment thread? But giving hope to Facebook users by pretending their "save Scrabulous" or "bring back Studio 60" group has any bearing on the real world, is cruel. Thank god the leisure activists deserve it.

Joost fired its CTO, Dirk-Willem van Gulik, a company flack told NewTeeVee. For a replacement, the Web TV service named Comcast's Matt Zelesko to be the company's senior vice president of engineering. Here's the weird part, though: van Gulik already has a new job.

Hoorah! The BBC has recanted from their evil, terroristic radio-bleeping of the word "faggot" on all their English wireless sets whilst playing the classic amazing 1987 Pogues song "Fairytale of New York" this holiday season. Bless you, BBC. [Daily Mirror]

Just when things turn bleak for Second Life maker Linden Lab — CTO Cory Ondrejka recently "left" the company — CEO Philip Rosedale manages to pull a fluff piece out of the BBC. He's previously denied he has anything to do with timing these media wet kisses, but we're skeptical. Perhaps it's his boyish charm and ability to spin numbers — or the fact that these media outlets are easily impressed by the whizzes and bangs of virtual worlds.

Afraid of being left in the stuffy, old-fashioned world of channel-hosted Web videos, the BBC is teaming up with rival U.K. broadcasters ITV and Channel 4 to develop their own multibrand TV destination. The model is Hulu, News Corp. and NBC's joint venture, which operates as a showcase for its partners' content as well as distributing it to other Web-video sites. The new British "aggregator," which will launch sometime in 2008, will offer content in a variety of formats, including free download, streaming, rental and purchase.

Who needs subscriptions? The U.K. public pays a mandatory license fee tax to fund the British Broadcasting Corporation. As a result, BBC TV, radio and websites are generally advertising-free. Now, the BBC Trust, the board overseeing the Beeb's operations, has approved a plan to put ads on BBC webpages for international readers. Apparently, users "did not express a strong objection" to advertising. How very commercial of them. (Photo by AP/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Holy smokes. The BBC will lay off between 2000 and 3000 people. They only have 23,000 employees. [FT]

There's a new battleground for digitally ditributed content brewing in the most unlikeliest of places — home videogame consoles. Last week there was the rather shocking announcement that Sony's PlayStation 3 would soon be home to movie and television content. Not to be outdone, Microsoft's Xbox 360, which has had video content downloads since last November, is now courting the BBC and all of its TV shows and HD programming. While the soothing tones of the BBC are not usually what we associate with xBox, the deal, which Microsoft is "working diligently on," would add some much needed gravitas to a portfolio currently dominated by South Park and UFC Fights.

Simon Nelson, the BBC's new-media guru, is delivering a keynote at next week's Edinburgh Interactive Games Festival. His speech, as described in the official literature, is why "the [BBC] had something to learn from games and how games will figure in the Beeb's new media folio in the future." The Internet interpreted this as a pending announcement of a BBC videogame strategy — the rumor strengthened by BBC's current portfolio of downloadable games based on its TV shows. And it's not like it would be that strange. Even the New York Times has started using newsgames to illustrate everything from the oil crisis to the E. coli outbreak. But the BBC is now denying everything. More's the pity.

The fallout continues from last week's royal debacle, in which the BBC was forced to publicly apologize to The Scariest Lady on the Planet, aka Queen Elizabeth II, for having rearranged footage to make it seem as though she had stormed out of a photo session with Annie Leibovitz. A Year with the Queen producers RDF Media e-mailed the director-general of the BBC, accepting full responsibility for what they refer to as "a serious error of judgment." Somehow, not even the divvying of blame among sub-production entities has done much to lessen the Queen's wrath, as The WOW Report's Fenton Bailey reprints an e-mail he received from a BBC contact:

Can you believe anything you see on the BBC? [Guardian]

Dude in charge of the BBC channel responsible for that whole "the Queen blew off Annie Leibovitz" story may lose his job. They're actually calling it Crowngate. It's kind of adorable how seriously the English take that whole monarchy thing. [Guardian]

"Recent BBC3 programme titles have included F**k Off I'm Fat, F**k Off I'm a Hairy Woman, 34-Stone Teenager Revisited and Me and My Man-Breasts." [Guardian]

"BBC2 cut short its live coverage of Tony Blair's last prime minister's questions today to show a promo for its drama series Rome." [Guardian]

The BBC on Mike Bloomberg's possible presidential campaign: "The rumour has been tickling Washington's political gonads for months now." [BBC]

BBC, Church of Scientology involved in online dispute [World Today]

• Ben Brantley: bad gaydar. [WWD]
  

• Murdoch (James, but you take what you can get) vs. Branson. RELATED: This Times summary. [NYT]