Facebook ’s move to begin renting online movies leads today’s cable news roundup.

While Time Warner Cable Inc. (NYSE: TWC) may be talking to Facebook about powering its TV Everywhere platform, former corporate sibling Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. is beginning to rent Dark Knight and other movies on the social network for $3 apiece.

Cablevision Systems Corp. (NYSE: CVC) is ramping up addressable advertising through a deal with Group M. Using technology from Visible World , the subscribers would see one of five different brands, depending on their location and demographics. (See Cablevision Eyes $50 Set-Top.)

Netflix Inc. (Nasdaq: NFLX) movie rentals are outpacing cable’s video-on-demand platform, if you buy the results of a PricewaterhouseCoopers study that also found consumers watch more than 20 hours of digital content weekly on computers and mobile devices.

Now that Angry Birds is coming to Facebook, we wonder how long before the hottest free game for Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL)’s iPhone and Android phones will be available as an interactive TV game on cable?

The U.S. cable industry accounted for 1.8 million jobs representing $77 billion in personal income and $251 billion in economic output in 2010, according to new stats from National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) .

Boxee is expanding overseas, hiring new staffers in Europe and Israel. It named Wil Stephens, former CEO of U.K. design firm Cube, VP of international business development. (See Boxee Preps a New Over-the-Top Box .)

Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) says it’s looking to improve the quality of original programming uploaded to YouTube Inc. with its $50 million acquisition of Next New Networks. But the hottest videos on YouTube may be viral videos created by advertisers, like the one burning up the Web today from Jennifer Aniston and Smart Water.







— Steve Donohue, Special to Light Reading Cable