• by John Gaffney , January 22, 2003

What’s The Frequency, Michael?: I was ready to lay off the FCC media ownership issues in this space. Move on. Seemed like FCC chairman Michael Powell heard some chin music up at a Capitol Hill hearing, and backed off his hell-bent attitude that media ownership rules would be history. Turns out that this guy changes his tune faster than Bill Clinton. Just a week after soft-pedaling potential rule changes on Capitol Hill we get this from the Chairman in yesterday’s USA Today: “As public servants, it is irresponsible for us to ignore these (modern media) changes. The time has come to honestly and fairly examine the facts of the modern marketplace and build rules that reflect the digital world we live in today, not the bygone era of black-and-white television. “ C’mon Mike. You’re either the administrator who directed the FCC to release 24 reports on the state of American media, and found it more diverse despite massive consolidation, or you’re the guy who told those nasty Senators that it might be too severe. Powell titles his USA Today piece “Just The Facts.” By that he meant that cold, hard data would decide the ownership rules. It’s not cold, hard data that will do it at all. It will take an analytical scope of all business that will be affected. This ain’t a statistics class. It’s the ad business. And we all know what kinds of people lean too heavily on statistics to prove their point.

Out-Of-Home Riff #1: I’ve been trading emails with an executive in the out-of-home business lately. He keeps asking me why we don’t cover more out-of-home media. I say give me a story to follow. Tuesday, I found one. If you haven’t seen what Nissan and TBWA have done to Grand Central, you really should. The entire commuter pedestrian tunnel from 42nd Street all the way up to 48th street is a series of ads for the new Nissan Murano. Now that’s hot stuff. You won six city blocks in NYC, you’re thinking.

Out-Of-Home Riff: Yesterday I drove a lot of Connecticut I-95 and while I wasn’t saving myself from huge tractor trailers I did notice that around New Haven there is a beautiful Breitling watch billboard, with pennants flying from the top. On the pennants were The Golden Arches. Cross-promotion? Get a Breitling with a Happy Meal?