Four musical icons, Gloria Estefan, Joe Jonas, John Rich and Nelly, have 72 hours to turn average folks into superstars on The Next, The CW network’s newest music reality show. It's premiering this Thursday with Queen Latifah on-board as a producer — and sponsorship by pre-paid mobile carrier Cricket's Muve Music, marking its first branded entertainment TV partnership.

As a ‘challenger brand,’ Cricket is the seventh largest wireless telecommunications network in the U.S., serving seven million plus customers and differentiating its brand by relying on music and entertainment to stand out in the pre-paid space. This new partnership with The Next is the brand’s pre-emptive move as the turf battle for wireless customers heats up.Continue reading...

Jim Walton graduated from the University of Maryland in 1981 and took an entry-level job at CNN, the network Ted Turner had founded only a year before. Now, after many titles and many changes, Walton will be going out on top, even as the CNN brand struggles to maintain audience and relevance day to day.

The Time Warner-owned media giant announced Friday that Walton will be stepping down as president of CNN Worldwide at year’s end.

“I am proud of what we have accomplished together over these last 10 years – innovative programming, the development of great talent in front of and behind the cameras, expansion in digital and mobile, significant investment and expansion in international coverage, financial success and, most importantly, great and trusted journalism,” Walton wrote in a note to the staff.

Of course there are also plenty of things he probably won’t miss about the job.Continue reading...

It rolls over the television industry every four years like a welcome wave of money, basically no matter what the economy at large is doing. The quadrennial advertising mania created by the coincidence of U.S. elections and the Olympics is upon us, and more outlets than ever are looking for ways to tap into all thatextra cash that will be spent by politicians and Olympics sponsors.

The bonanza is even bigger than before during this election cycle because courts keep upholding the validity of corporate and individual election spending as free speech, so super-PACs will be adding their hundreds of millions of dollars of TV ads to the amounts already due for expenditure by the political parties and candidates themselves.Continue reading...

Just as Britons start greeting visitors descending on London for the Summer Olympics, news this week will either have them leaping off the couch to get moving — as Olympic sponsors such as McDonald's have been urging folks to do — or slump back in despair and reaching for another handful of crisps.

Apparently the 60 million good citizens of the UK are the, well, fattest in Western Europe, and when London was awarded the 2012 Summer Olympics back in 2005, officials pledged to use the Games as incentive for 2 million Britons to increase their physical activity by the opening ceremonies.

“When the torch is lit July 27," writes the Associated Press, the U.K. "government will not only have failed, it will have backed away from its pledge entirely. Last year, the U.K. quietly dropped its aim to get 1 million more Britons into sports; the pledge to get another 1 million people more active through things like biking or walking to work has also been scrapped.”Continue reading...

One woman, somewhere in the world, becomes a victim of sex trafficking, forced prostitution, gender-based violence, or maternal mortality every 90 seconds. Now, a powerful cabal of producers, NGO’s, gamers and celebrities have joined forces in a transmedia project of unprecedented proportion to address this heinous reality.

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, the acclaimed book by Pulitzer Prize-winners Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, is the centerpiece of the project which includes a four-hour PBS miniseries (trailer above), mobile games in India and Africa, websites and educational materials, and a social action game coming to Facebook in November.Continue reading...

"Digital is one of the most crucial things for a modern brand manager to get right, so the pressure is on for (social media/digital strategist) Siobhan to explain her strategy. Twitter, Facebook, Mashable and even MySpace all have their part to play in creating the digital legacy for the Games."

BBC Two's Twenty Twelve comedy series (already a must-see) nails the overzealously social nature of the London 2012 Summer Olympics in the video above. All kidding aside, teams of social media strategists at the BBC and indeed around the world have been working almost as vigorously as the athletes, organizers and sponsors on how to make this the most interactive Olympic Games yet.

Since the previous Olympics in Beijing, tech advancements including Super Hi-Vision, live 3D TV and live broadcasting via smartphones have moved center-stage. Now the advent of social apps, social TV and social everything will be threaded through this Olympics, and — brace yourselves — all Olympics to come.Continue reading...

The annual San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC) kicks off today, and as ever, it's a massive promotional platform for brands.

Founded as the "Golden State Comic Book Convention" in 1970 by a group of San Diegan comic book fans, the annual fanfest has evolved to include video games, toys and other forms of genre entertainment. That's why Hollywood beats a path south to the show every year — to generate buzz among the estimated 250,000 comic book, sci-fi, fantasy, anime, and video game fans hitting town for the four day pop-culture fix.

One of the biggest movies being touted this year: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2, which marks the cast's last appearance as Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner hyping the Nov. 16th final bow with a 1pm ET (above) panel. Also red-hot: Iron Man 3, with Robert Downey Jr. and co-stars on hand to promote the movie scheduled for May 3rd of next year.Continue reading...

It's a dilemma as old as the first wild stalk of broccoli: How do you get a child to eat it? The latest twist on the ancient battle for kids' gullets is a new campaign by Birds Eye, the frozen-vegetable giant, with Nickelodeon and the Partnership for a Healthier America.

As part of an initiative that launched in May called "GenVeg" — for Generation Vegetable, of course — Bird's Eye is marketing directly to children through a cross-promotional partnership with the popular kids TV show iCarly. The centerpiece of the co-branded campaign is a contest, "iCarly Cooks with Birds Eye," in which kids visiting the Nick.com website will be encouraged to develop wacky new recipes for vegetables. The contest kicked off Monday with a video featuring Jennette McCurdy, one of the stars of the show.

"We're hoping that will add to the cachet with kids, and we're also filming a commercial with kids that will be airing on Nickelodeon," Alan Creveling, Bird's Eye brand manager, told brandchannel. "It's a very Nickelodeon way: putting kids in charge of things."Continue reading...