UK Bits: Style.com UK, Virgin Radio, BBC/Zattoo

Style.com UK: CondeNet International will launch its US pure-play brands Style.com and Men’ Style.com for the UK after a test in Italy, NMA says. The publisher already operates mags like Glamour and GQ but says it’s not possible to publish parenting or recipe stories in its existing online portfolio. So it will use the new launches to aggregate material from those – same portal story as IPC and Emap (LSE: EMA) have been doing.

Virgin/Times: Why did Times of India buy Virgin Radio? Because of the internet, A.P. Parigi, CEO of its TIML unit, suggested to FT. “‘Now is the time, Parigi,’ (group CEO Vineet Jain) told me. ‘Pick an asset and an appropriate price.’ He sees this market as one of untapped potential because of the convergence of audio and the internet. We could have just gone for serving the Asian diaspora, but Vineet said also look at the mainstream, so we did.”

BBC One: Amongst a host of very BBC pledges in the corporation’s Statement Of Programme Policy for 2008/09, the broadcaster plans to start streaming BBC One live on a revamped channel website. Auntie had already begun to stream BBC Three and has been simulcasting the BBC News for several months. On the subject of live channel streaming, Swiss-based live TV app Zattoo has already beaten Auntie to streaming not just the core BBC One but also the Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland versions. Zattoo is no up to 2.4 million users and has released multi-lingual versions of its client.