Cabs will be able to offer weather, news, and news-you-can-use features, which will run in a loop.

Dave Davis, President and General Manager of WABC-TV in New York stated that this, “significantly expands the growth opportunities ahead for our taxi TV programming and advertising business,” according to Deadline.

The deal also encompasses cabs located in Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, Anaheim, Kansas City, Denver, Columbus, and Charlotte. With those additional cabs, that brings the total to around 10,000 cabs where ABC content will be shown.

According to the companies, this deal will “lay the groundwork for additional expansion into new markets… in the coming months“.

What do you think of advertising in cabs? Tell us what you think in the comment area below.

Yahoo Music Exec Goes Country

When it rains, it pours, goes the saying on the Morton’s Salt box. Yahoo has been raining executives, as yet another decided to switch careers to another company.

This time it’s Country Music Television enticing a highly-placed Yahoo out of Sunnyvale. Frank had served as vice president of music programming and label relations for Yahoo Music.

CMT said Frank will have broad responsibilities at the network. “He will oversee CMT’s music and talent division and all of the network’s on-air and digital music initiatives across multiple platforms, including films, games, touring and other program enterprise businesses,” the network said.

Frank will also serve as a liaison to Music Row and the rest of the country music community, similar to his label relations duties at Yahoo. He had an impressive track record at Yahoo, according to Variety:

At Yahoo, Frank was integral in securing music premieres and performance exclusives for Yahoo Music from such artists as Madonna, Faith Hill, Big & Rich, Toby Keith, Eminem, Nelly, Linkin Park, 50 Cent and Coldplay. Frank oversaw Yahoo’s radio programming and coordinated artist relations. He was instrumental in helping break a number of acts.

The move leaves Yahoo with another tough act to follow. The music industry has a lot of ambitious people working in it, and replacing Frank should not be as challenging as filling other roles at Yahoo, like the CTO position founder and new CEO Jerry Yang holds in addition to his executive duties.

Yahoo! Movies backs CNN up with reviewers and consumers giving the movie a C average.

BlogPulse predicted the Dukes of Hazzard movie would, um, crash based on the lack of blog buzz prior to the movie. Technorati backs this up with only 51 posts sporting a Dukes of Hazzard tag.

A blog is not going to improve a bad movie, but it can certainly help generate more excitement, anticipation and attendance than an official movie web site. The expectations for official movie sites are a lot higher today, in part because of consumer-generated media. Aunt Tilly can post pictures of her trip to see the world’s largest ball of twine to her blog; I want more than a few pictures and wallpaper for my computer monitor at your web site. Give me behind the scenes access and posts from some of the stars.

The Dukes of Hazzard movie site has no blog. But Country Music Television can tell you that there is a lot of interest in a blog on this topic. CMT made a ton of news with their search for a vice president of their Dukes of Hazzard institute who would also blog about the show. CMT introduced Chris Nelson on June 2nd and, more than two months later, there is still no blog to be found on the CMT site. This blog would have helped the movie too.

Goofus and Gallant
So the Goofus goes to the Dukes of Hazzard movie for not tapping into the blogosphere to help promote the movie. The Gallant goes to Garden State. Writer, director and star Zach Braff’s Garden State Blog helped generate a ton of buzz for the cult movie long after it hit theatres.

Reader Comments…

Kevin Dugan is the author of the popular Strategic Public Relations blog. Kevin is Director of Marketing Communications for FRCH Design Worldwide.

Visit Kevin’s blog: Strategic Public Relations.

Nelson applied for the job along with almost 2,000 others in late February, shortly after an ad for the position was placed in several industry publications. You can find the job application on Country Music Television’s Web site.

This sounds very similar to my prediction that companies would sign bloggers to endorsement deals. It’s a clever PR stunt. The key question I have at this stage with this and any such program that compensates a blogger is: where is the transparency? It seems like there’s more to know – e.g. what level of control will CMT have over Nelson’s postings. This is why we are choosing to be very transparent every step of the way with the Vespa blogging program. (Via the Goodblog)

Link: CNN Money

Reader Comments…

Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.

The Dukes Of Hazzard Need A Blogger! Click For The Full Image!!

WebProNews Editor’s note:

CALLING ALL BLOGGERS! Well… bloggers that are fans of the Dukes of Hazzard television show as well.

Discuss you thoughts at WebProWorld.

Through the CMT Dukes of Hazzard Institute, the Vice President position will be responsible for spreading the gospel of all that is Dukes by watching and then blogging about the show on CMT.

This seemed too good to be true, so I spoke with both Amanda Murphy, a very charming CMT publicist and Andy Holeman, a very fun director of consumer marketing.

And, well, there is no catch. CMT is looking for a Dukes aficionado – or someone willing and able to to become a Dukes aficionado – who has a commitment to learning to what really is a well-paid dream job. What does that mean? You’re a Dukes evangelist. There will be appearances at Dukefest and some travel, but it’s mainly a blogging job. Watch the show, make appearances and blog about the show.

How cool is that?

Now, this to me is a smart PR, smart marketing, smart blogging. It was a collective CMT / Great! idea that came up during a brainstorming session.

As noted by CMT, “The Dukes of Hazzard is such a big show, and it’s a big piece of great television, and it deserved its own dedicated professional to oversee it. CMT considers itself the place for Dukes, and the campaign around the CMT Duke Institute is a way to tie a great opportunity into something exceptional.”

According to Ms. Murphy, there already were a ton of calls coming in, with a lot of radio interviews and TV calls. CMT did both a video news release and full multimedia press release (where I got the fun photo above) – a great strategy for something so visual. While Ms. Murphy was doing her publicist thing – smile and dial – she had the tools that she needed to be able to get the news out. She had the photos, she had video, she had executives available to speak – which is why I was able to speak with Andy.

Other pieces of information that I got from CMT: Part of the dream job is the pay, and watching TV. It’s the perfect job for a television fan. You become an expert of all things Duke, and, yes, there is a possibility that you can drive General Lee.

And, not only is Cooter the president of the CMT Dukes Institute, but he is deeply involved in the process for choosing the Vice President.

This should be fun and exciting for one Dukes of Hazzard fan. Or, for one blogger that can learn to become a Dukes of Hazzard fan. The application is on the CMT Website, and is pretty funny.And, someone coming out of college couldn’t do worse highlighting their blogging skills – catch the hint, Auburn students? – which could also lead to a nice portfolio piece.

As for a PR campaign, this melds all the best of new communications and mainstream media. CMT is reaching out to bloggers for a well-paid job – because, let’s be honest, how many people are making $100K to blog – and is getting massive buzz in the mainstream press. If this campaign goes as well as I think it will, I hope that Great! does a case study on how marketing can work within the blogosphere in a smart way.

Jeremy Pepper is the CEO and founder of POP! Public Relations, a public relations firm based in Arizona, USA.

He authors the popular Musings from POP! Public Relations blog which offers Jeremy’s opinions and views – on public relations, publicity and other things.