Online Video

Barely a year after leaving Fox News, Glenn Back is back on the airwaves. On Wednesday, satellite broadcaster Dish Network announced that The Blaze, Beck's 24-hour online news and opinion network, would be available to its subscribers starting at 5 p.m. EDT. Beck departed Fox News in June 2011 amid declining ratings for his eponymous program and allegations that he was becoming increasingly extreme in his viewpoint. A year ago exactly, he launched GBTV, an online video channel which has attracted some 300,000 paid subscribers.

Comcast Corp. said it would provide clips from the Golf Channel, E! and other cable TV broadcasts to an online video site planned by News Corp. and NBC Universal, joining a project aimed at competing with Google Inc.'s YouTube. Comcast also will distribute the online video site through Comcast.net and Fancast.com, which is a new entertainment site launching this summer. Other companies that have signed on as distributors include Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Time Warner Inc.'s AOL.

TV audiences who watch online and through mobile devices may be looking better to advertisers and networks. A new study by ComScore Inc. and the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement found that people who watch TV online in addition to the traditional way spend more time consuming the content.   According to the study of 10,000 consumers, people who view programming through TV and online spend 25% more time viewing than those who engage only through regular television.

When an online video gets more than a million views, it's hard to ignore. That may be the reason the Transportation Security Administration took the unusual step last week to address an online video that claims to show how to circumvent the full-body scanners that the TSA has installed at 140 airports across the country. Jonathan Corbett, a blogger and TSA critic, posted a video this month on YouTube and his own Web page, www.tsaoutofourpants.wordpress.com , titled "How to Get Anything Through TSA Nude Body Scanners.

YouTube has snagged a licensing deal with Merlin, a consortium of independent music labels that together represent 14,000 artists including Adele and Arcade Fire. The deal lets musicians represented by Merlin receive royalties each time a YouTube user publishes an online video that uses all or parts of a song owned by a Merlin artist. Merlin is considered to be the world's fifth-largest record label, after Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and EMI Group, which is being auctioned off by its owner, Citigroup.

Vimeo has launched an on-demand service that allows creators to sell their own works -- and keep 90% of the revenue after transaction costs. The online video platform showcased its new offering at the South By Southwest festival in Austin with a screening Tuesday of "It's Such a Beautiful Day," the latest project from Academy Award-nominated animator Don Hertzfeldt.  Vimeo Chief Executive Kerry Trainor said the on-demand feature builds on...

Lauren Conrad of "The Hills" fame -- and also fashion-line fame and "L.A. Candy" novel series fame -- has an online video series called Crafty Creations. In it, she undertakes low-end DIY projects, such as melting crayons on a board and calling it art, making a bracelet out of washers, and building corkboards from wine corks. Supportive commenters leave messages like "Lauren~ Just when I think you have done it all you come up with Crafty-creations, Absolutely LOVE!!!" and "You are still so adorable!

The gig: Michael Palmer is co-founder and executive producer of Clevver Media, a nearly 6-year-old Hollywood company that has launched seven YouTube channels, including its flagship, ClevverTV, a teen version of TMZ or E! that provides entertainment and celebrity news for the "Twilight" generation. The intern: As a film production major at USC, Palmer interned for one of the most successful producers in Hollywood: Jerry Bruckheimer, whose credits include the popular "CSI" television series and "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie franchise.

Viewers who tuned into NBC's telecast of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games got to see plenty of pomp and spectacle. But the time-delayed broadcast on Friday was missing a crucial segment -- a dance tribute created by British choreographer Akram Khan. NBC edited out Khan's sequence and replaced it with a segment featuring Ryan Seacrest interviewing swimmer Michael Phelps. Khan later said during a press conference that he was "disheartened and disappointed" by the decision.