According to the Harris Poll in August, 2002, the number of people who assign high prestige to military officers and police officers has increased from the August 2001 survey, fielded just before 9/11. At the same time, this year’s survey finds significant drops in prestige for doctors, teachers, and the clergy.

"America's multicultural consumers are fast becoming the general market for broadband services. Ultimately, the interaction of the established media brands with new urban-oriented programming and entertainment concepts will define the new media landscape." says Alisse Waterston, Ph.D., President of Surveys Unlimited. A study entitled The 3rd wave of State of Broadband Urban Markets, released by Horowitz Associates shows that urban consumers have emerged as a key broadband segment, in particular for the delivery of digital content to the TV.

Jupiter Research reports that online bill viewing and payment will be among the fastest growing consumer applications over the next three years in a recent release. By 2006, more than 50 million households will view bills online and 52 million households will pay at least one bill online. This represents a compound annual growth rate of 23% over 2001's figure of 18 million U.S. households who viewed at least one bill online.

A special weekly online ratings analysis, released by comScore Media Metrix, covers traffic patterns around the fall television premiers. Included is a summary of the how the big networks fared and additional newsworthy findings from the week, such as a surge in visitors to UN.ORG amidst increasing U.S.-Iraq tensions.

Americans have become well known for their ability to multitask. A new study, by BIGresearch, has found that Americans have begun multitasking in a new arena - media. The study, which measures simultaneous media usage (when consumers use a primary media source while a secondary source is in use), may change how marketers reach their target audiences.

While Monster.com is a four to one favorite in the Education and Career site category, with females leading the queries, Entertainment is not so lopsided but it's more male oriented, during the last week in September.

Harte-Hanks reports that business-to-business (B2B) e-mail marketing campaigns can yield an average click-through rate of 1.3%, but can go as high as 25%. The study, representing 4.25 million e-mail addresses, executed between August 2001 and August 2002.

"when traffic levels increase on Web sites, the result is a potential goldmine for both publishers and advertisers." As unique audience levels on sports Web sites have increased in the past five months, so have ad impressions levels on those sites. During the period April through August, paid impressions on sports sites increased an average of 23 percent per month, despite an overall market that saw an up and down summer.

Nielsen//NetRatings data for the week of September 22 reports on Automotive sites and Consumer and Electronics. EBay Motors outdoes the Kelley Blue Book two to one! And Microsoft reaches 1/3 of the users, four times more than the closest alternative in Consumer Electronics.

With elections imminent, communicating with government officials and prospective voters is of significant interest. Local officials have embraced the Internet as part of their official lives and most now use email to communicate with constituents. This result is in contrast to Congressional representatives, who have felt swamped by email and who often dismiss emails as not very meaningful, while local officials find them useful.