HOW MANY LIGHTBULBS DOES IT TAKE TO SCREW ON THIS POLE? -- We always suspected that the Bostonian ad community had more fun than their Madison Avenue counterparts. Or at least, that they were more prone to letting their hair down.

UNDULY JULIE -- Lately, we don't read the print edition of Advertising Age cover-to-cover, but we always look forward to its annual "Book of Tens." The special year-end edition is good stuff, encapsulating the ad industry's most significant milestones - from the perspective of the editors of Advertising Age, anyway - into one delightful read.

IF THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE, VNU WANTS TO BE ITS MESSENGER -- The restructuring of VNU signals two important trends that readers of this column might want to take heed of: 1) The increasing influence of private equity firms in the transformation of the media industry; 2) The growing importance of media vs. marketing knowledge.

THIS JUST IN: THE RIFF HEARS NBC IS ABOUT TO NAME A NEW PILOT TO FLY NBC'S NETWORK TV SALES FORCE -- In fact, it's Mike Pilot, a top GE executive from the parent company's industrial side. Now back to our regularly unscheduled Riff column...

THE MANDEL OPERANDI -- Jon Mandel is an inspired choice to pull all of Nielsen's pieces back together again. It's been tried before, and with what would seem like a comparatively smaller portfolio of research services than Nielsen has today, or increasingly plans to have in the future.

RIFFIFICATION: TIME-SHIFTED COMMERCIAL RATINGS GOOD, NOT BAD -- Anyone who has had the pleasure of reading a riffification before knows that when we get something wrong, we usually get it really, really wrong. But this time, we don't feel so bad.

PAUSE AND EFFECT -- Well, it's Election Day. The day millions of people vote to elect candidates and decide on propositions representing the interests of everyone - even the millions who don't vote.

OKAY, BUT TELL US WHAT YOU KNOW -- The good thing about Wal-Mart's selection of Draft FCB and Carat as its new agency roster is, well, that they've selected Draft FCB and Carat as its new agency roster. The assignment is an important vote of confidence by the world's biggest retailer for two organizations that really needed it.

THESE LADIES DOTH PROTEST TOO MUCH, WETHINKS -- Cable network research executives have raised some important methodological issues concerning Nielsen's plans to begin releasing commercial ratings later this year, but the industry's decision to sit it out raises a big question of its own: Is cable simply seeking to stall the inevitable, or maybe even hoping to derail it? It sure looks that way from the outside looking in. Consider the panicky way cable networks first reacted to the surprise broadcast network initiative earlier this year to produce average commercial minute ratings--and the hand-wringing that followed the broadcast networks' PR …

TO HAVE OR HAVAS NOT -- Maybe news travels slower than we thought in Western Europe, but we would have thought that the re-bundling - or at the very least, the re-integration of media services - had reached as far as Suresnes, France, and Barcelona, Spain. Apparently not.