europe

At the ANGA Cable show in Cologne, Tuesday, ActiveVideo Networks (formerly ICTV)--a San Jose, Calif.-based interactive television company which offers a platform that it bills as intelligently streaming both traditional and Web-based content to digital set-top boxes and Web-connected CE devices and as combining the personalized, dynamic, socially connected experience of the Web with the quality, immediacy and remote-control navigation that end-users expect from television--announced that it has reached an agreement to buy Avinity Systems

AFDESI, which was launched in 2000 as a professional body for the
French interactive TV industry, is expanding its scope to additionally
represent the ITV industries of the UK, Spain, Italy, Switzerland and
Germany. While the organization will continue to be called AFDESI
(which originally stood for the Association of French Developers and
Editors of Interactive Services), that acronym will now stand for the
Association for the Development of Enhanced TV Services and
Interactivity. AFDESI says that the goal of the expansion of its
mandate is to "create a strong, independent professional association in
each territory that can act together, collaboratively when necessary, to

Following the UK's recent participation TV scandal, that country's
broadcast regulator, Ofcom, has proposed new rules to tighten
regulation of TV and radio programs that rely heavily on premium-rate
telephone services (PRS). The body says that its proposed changes to
the UK's Broadcasting Code will "ensure that programs that invite
viewers and listeners to interact or participate are not vehicles for
promoting commercial, revenue-generating services," and will also
"ensure that viewers are adequately protected and that advertising is
kept separate from editorial content, as required under European
legislation."

The new rules state that when PRS is used in a program for audience
participation: