Pepsi's new global platform — the "Live for Now" cross-platform campaign — has found a friend in MTV. Given that Live for Now is music-based, with tie-ins with Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry, even Michael Jackson, it makes perfect sense for the beverage giant to tie in with MTV Networks, in addition to MTVN's siblings across the youth-skewing Viacom empire, in order to maximize the exposure of the effort.

With social and digital threaded throughout Pepsi's Live for Now (and Viacom's DNA), the upfront-inked partnership means fans will be able to tweet images with individual hashtags, relevant to various Viacom-owned TV shows and digital properties, for a chance to win prizes and get their photos featured in those shows and in Pepsi's advertising efforts in keeping with these Pinteresting, photo-tagging times we live in.Continue reading...

Nigel Lythgoe is plenty busy trying to bring American Idol back to its former glory on Fox, and producing and co-judging his other big success on TV, So You Think You Can Dance — even making appearances on The View. But the king of reality contest shows still has found time to conceive and launch an Idol-style property aimed at creating a new star of country music.

In April, Lythgoe and his son, Simon Lythgoe, will debut CMT’s Next Superstar on the Viacom-owned cable channel CMT, short for Country Music Television. Based in Nashville instead of Hollywood, Superstar will last only 10 episodes and will differ markedly from Idol and Dance in many other ways.

But the basic aim will be the same: Create the same sort of perennial hit in the country-music genre that Idol has become for the music industry overall.Continue reading...