Treehouse of Horror XVII premieres tonight. Stupid Fox.

Ricky, Steve & Karl return to the Guardian for a special series of three free podcasts. Jarvis Cocker provides a Halloween story. But no Treehouse of Horror.

Alain Levy says the CD is dead in that no longer will labels be able to sell discs without offering “value-added” material. Warner Music Group had already announced plans in August to release long-playing music DVDs that would include video footage, higher-quality sound and a duplicate set of tracks, potentially encoded as iTunes AACs by Apple Computer.

“Baby Blue” by Badfinger is available on iTunes from today, the proper 1972 Straight Up-era recording, the first appearance of any Apple record on iTunes save “King of Fuh” which, since it never made a commercial release, reverted to Brute Force). You can only purchase it as part of the soundtrack to The Departed, but it’s a very curious development since Neil Aspinall is said to be very conservative with licensing and would have to have had a substantial incentive to cooperate, even through third parties, with a company which Apple Corps is in litigation with for trademark violations.

I almost forgot to mention—the first series of The State is available on iTunes, maybe the only television I’d consider buying in a low-res digital format.