Briefs

AOLmusic.com experienced record traffic during its online simulcast of the Live 8 concerts held around the globe on July 2. The company says more than 5 million people tuned in, and the service streamed out more than 175,000 simultaneous streams, breaking previous records for an online video event. AOLmusic.com streamed live concerts from Philadelphia, London, Paris, Rome, Berlin and Toronto from start to finish, attracting music lovers who weren't satisfied with MTV's commercial-laden and interview-heavy telecast.

Two East Coast providers of rental production gear, Skehan Communications Group and East Coast Television, have merged in an effort to serve their clients (which include Fox News, NBC, CBS and ESPN) more efficiently. The combined entity will operate under the East Coast Television banner.

WNYT Albany, N.Y., has upgraded its newsroom with Grass Valley digital news-production gear. The station added seven NewsEdit nonlinear editing systems and three M-Series iVDR (intelligent video digital recorder) units. To help reporters edit at their workstations, the station also purchased 15 Grass Valley NewsEdit editing and high-resolution review station licenses that will be loaded onto existing PCs.

Amdocs Management Limited, a provider of backend billing and other customer-relationship-management services and products for telecom companies, is getting into the cable, satellite and broadband business with the acquisition of DST Innovis and DST Interactive. The cash deal is worth about $238 million. Amdocs CEO Dov Baharav says the acquisition expands the company's customer base, as DST Innovis provides billing and customer-care services for 37 million DirecTV, Comcast and Cablevision subscribers. In 2004, the company posted revenues of $233 million.