While in London recently, BoomTown got the chance to do an onstage interview with Tony Cohen of FremantleMedia, the under-the-radar media company that is one of the most successful international producers of mostly televised entertainment.

You might have heard of one of its brands: The “Idol” juggernaut and all its spinoffs, including “American Idol.” Yes, the man we can finally all blame for Ryan Seacrest!

In any case, Cohen and I had a lovely chat about the future of television in the digital age.

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Finally, someone who might actually understand the Internet will be taking charge of the thus-far lackadaisical government body that plays the largest role in spurring its growth.

It looks like Julius Genachowski will be tapped by President-elect Barack Obama to take on the always controversial job of chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. The news was reported in several places late yesterday, and sources with knowledge of the situation also confirmed the appointment to BoomTown.

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This morning, FriendFeed, which is a kind of content delivery version of Twitter, went international, launching in six new languages–German, French, Spanish, Japanese, Russian and simplified Chinese. Now live, the move is a natural extension for the Mountain View, Calif.-based start-up–founded earlier this year by a small gang of ex-Googlers, who joined together to create a service for super-aggregating updates of all kinds for social-networking and news items in an ongoing feed. Here’s a video interview I did last week with Taylor and Buchheit about a range of topics, including–my favorite–monetization, or lack thereof, of a lot of terrific services like FriendFeed and Twitter.

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Germany’s Hubert Burda Media threw a big luncheon in Palo Alto yesterday, which was stuffed full with Silicon Valley types. It was hosted by the company’s Steffi Czerny and Maria Burda, the wife of CEO and owner Hubert Burda, as well as well-known Israeli investor Yossi Vardi.

Burda runs an annual digital conference in Munich, called DLD (Digital, Life, Design), even though the media giant is best known for its old-line magazines about fashion, cooking and crafts.

So here’s the video!

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