Mercury Media, the theatrical distributor of “Loose Change,” an infamous documentary exploring September 11 conspiracies, is teaming with video-on-demand (VOD) vendor Aggregator to launch what it calls a “radical” new IPTV content service.

The new service, JoiningTheDots.tv, will launch in February 2007 with the motto “independent films for independent people.” Its library of more than 200 titles will contain, according to a statement issued Thursday by Aggregator, “a wide range of factual programming, including current affairs, history, observational, polemic, arts, nature and science as well as non-partisan forums and a portal for user-generated factual content.”

“Today’s TV schedules are driven by ratings and increasingly present a banal blend of soaps, gossip and reality shows, resulting in very limited space for high-quality, independent factual programming,” Tim Sparke, Mercury’s managing director, said in Thursday’s statement. “Broadband is the natural space for documentary…[it] provides the direct and independent route to the viewer that our genre of programming needs and deserves.”

Founded in May 2005, London-based Aggregator aims to accrue, package and deliver video content using a set-top box it plans to release in the United Kingdom early next year.

“You won't need a set-top box for Internet delivery [of JoiningTheDots.tv], though we hope to be able to offer a VOD version through TV once we have established the service in the U.S.,” Sparke said in an e-mail to Telephony. He did not say when the service would be available in the U.S.

Mercury is a six-year-old, London film developer and distributor specializing in documentaries. Next year it will distribute to theaters “Loose Change,” a documentary exploring questions surrounding the Sept. 11 attacks that gained popularity on the Internet. Citing the 80-minute film’s 10 million downloads, Vanity Fair has called “Loose Change” “the first Internet blockbuster.”