Variety reports that E! (Entertainment Television) will be launching a new online news program called E! News Now. The "show" will run one to two minutes and discuss the latest breaking news story. The program will also be distributed on mobile phones and possibly through partners. 

Ted Turner's baby, CNN, is adding to its anchors... online anchors that is. The cable station that became the world's first 24-hour news production machine has staff that report on camera only for the website.   

E! and CNN could be anticipating what the "Godfather of the Internet", Dr. Vint Cerf, predicts will happen in the relationship between television and the Internet: that soon we will all be watching TV through the Internet. "85% of all video we watch is pre-recorded, so you can set your system to download it all the time," said Dr. Cerf, quoted in the Guardian. "You're still going to need live television for certain things - like news, sporting events and emergencies - but increasingly it is going to be almost like the iPod, where you download content to look at later." 

To be fair, numerous newspapers are already well into the realm of video, even running daily segments. For example, the Daily Telegraph produces a 5-minute daily business video and the Naples News in Florida films an array of local video on an Internet channel called Studio 55.

Changing gears from Internet video, Media Week reports that Fox television stations in the United States are vying to be the authority on local high school sports in 23 markets including big cities like Chicago and New York. Foxhilites.com includes online video sharing and social networks. Those involved in high school sports can post their own videos to the site and social networking can be used to create communities and relationships between parents and their children's coaches and teachers.

Fox joins a group of other American broadcasters, including newspaper publishing houses (which also have a broadcast wing) Hearst and Belo. These broadcasters, which own television stations in smaller markets, have realized the need for more hyper-local coverage and are taking advantage of the interactivity and immediacy that the Internet allows.

Now, have the newspapers in these markets missed the boat? Will they be able to edge into the hyper-local sports coverage? Or will they end up partnering with their local television news stations? 

Sources: Variety, Broadcasting & Cable, Guardian, Media Week