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Ford has partnered with NBC to develop Escape Routes. a prime time reality TV show featuring a cast of six teams of two taking part in a road trip contest in the new Ford Escape.

The journey starts in Los Angeles and teams then head to New York, Atlanta, Miami, San Francisco and Las Vegas before returning to LA. At each city stop, teams will compete in a series of ‘spontaneous adventures’ and interactive challenges using their cars.

The UK population consumes its media on a wider variety of platforms than ever before, and the ability to move music, television shows, podcasts and movies to any device and platform is their most desired new innovation, says the State Of The Media Democracy research conducted by Deloitte.

Power To The Pixel has issued a last call for applications to its The Pixel Lab European cross-media course set to take place in Potsdam, Germany, in July. The project-focused business development initiative for film producers and media professionals will develop participants’ skills to create, finance and distribute cross-media stories spanning any combination of film, interactive, live event, mobile, gaming, TV, publishing and online.

Forty two percent of streamers and downloaders of TV network video say the availability of such content makes them think more highly of a TV network, according to Knowledge Networks research. Some 22% report they would never have watched some shows if they were not accessible online (compared to 10% in 2008).

TV network AMC has deployed Mad Men’s graphic falling man in a series of billboards to promote the next series of the advertising drama. The plummeting Don Draper heads towards the season premiere date of March 25.

Channel 4 is launching 4seven, a new seven-day TV catch-up channel which will live across multiple platforms. The new channel’s USP will be social media, with C4 scheduling the content which creates most noise on social media sites and blogs. The broadcaster says it will incorporate the buzz into the look and feel of 4seven.

MTV and ad agency AKQA have launched a new MTV app, Under The Thumb, in Europe, which will enable MTV audiences to watch streamed programmes while chatting to friends. The Tiny Thumbs channel on the app features celebrity news, MTV highlights and some limited ad-funded shows, while content in the Super Thumbs channels comes in at €2.99 a month.

It’s election day, and with the Kremlin in control of most television channels and broadband penetration rising, TV is a rare sight in the lives of youngsters in Russia – it is commonly known as ‘zombo box’ and considered very old school, says Konstantin Pinaev*

Instead, almost all media consumption is built exclusively around the Internet – with legal and illegal downloading, advanced systems of recommendations, ratings, discussions and endless streams of suggestions from social networks, blogs and microblogs.