ESPN's first season of "Monday Night Football" is the most-watched series in cable history, the network says. Its 17 NFL games averaged over 9 million homes and 12.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research, and represented the 17 largest household audiences for cable in 2006.

According to ESPN, more than 109 million people tuned into MNF at some point--and studio shows also got a pop as Monday Night Countdown was up 23%; Sunday NFL Countdown rose 5%; and the weekday NFL Live show jumped 22% rise in viewership from 443,000 to 542,000.

"ESPN's Monday Night Football greatly exceeded all expectations," says George Bodenheimer, ESPN and ABC Sports president. "Our commitment to present MNF as never before served our fans and lifted every aspect of ESPN's business." Read the whole story...

Big Pharma is looking to set another ad spending record, with drug marketers pushing budgets up by almost 9% over 2005. Total spending on all prescription drug brands should come in at $4.5 billion, according to TNS, up from $4.1 billion.

And the growth was driven by some familiar names, including Sepracor's insomnia drug Lunesta, which will probably grab the spending crown with $219 million ponied up through September of this year--a 78% jump.

Nielsen Monitor-Plus date indicates an even higher figure: $292 million for January through October, well over 2005's $227 million. Those numbers are especially dramatic because even at the lower level, Lunesta has the largest drug ad budget in the U.S.

And Pfizer's Viagra returned to its previous high-spending ways, spending $65 million through September, a 15% increase on last year. Pfizer had stopped advertising Viagra in late 2004 and early 2005 after complaints from the Food and Drug Administration about the quality of its ads. Read the whole story...

Agencies that specialize in touting environmental organizations and eco-friendly products are sprouting like alfalfa. "When I started out in 2003, there were maybe five or six green agencies around," says John Rooks, president of Dwell Creative, a three-person environmental ad agency in Portland, Maine. "There's got to be at least 50 of us now."

While there are no firm numbers to back that up, there is anecdotal evidence that the count is increasing. "The nonprofits are realizing that it takes money to create a brand, and the corporations are finally getting that their customers really care about green," said Hugh Hough, who founded the advertising agency Green Team in New York a dozen years ago. A visceral understanding of environmental issues may be the biggest selling point the new agencies have. Read the whole story...