I recently pulled out my first book, Adbashing: Surviving the Attacks on Advertising, published in 1993, to reread it and see if any of my ideas and forecasts for the future were right, wrong, relevant or maybe even downright embarrassing. I was actually stunned by how so many of the chapters and paragraphs could have been lifted right from the 1993 book and transported to 2007 as if they were written yesterday. In the same context, I have been attending conferences and events where industry leaders give speeches that could almost be taken, word for word, from presentations made by …

This week is about viewer involvement in programming and the rich potential for subversion that exists. Having been weaned at the tender age of seven on the earliest episodes of "Monty Python" in the U.K. in 1969, I have to confess a deep-seated love of the subversive and that which pokes fun at the conventional wisdoms and practices of everyday life. So, naturally, I find myself irresistibly drawn to http://www.votefortheworst.com (VFTW) -- a Web site entirely based on the notion that if enough people vote for the crappiest singer, then "American Idol" can be way more fun.

On an early winter posting on TV Board I professed my appreciation for TiVo, praised its ability to save relationships, and recommended that it promote, through advertising, this special ability -- this gift -- to the general public in order to garner more subscriptions. How did I appreciate thee and thy partners. Let me reiterate the ways.

Not that I'm eager to point this out, but I'm old enough to remember television news coverage of the Vietnam War. It was the brutal scenes presented in the nightly network news that first awoke the nation to the horrors and atrocities of the war -- those imposed both by and on our troops. In the 1970s, there were just the three nightly newscasts, but it feels like they had far more impact on society and attitudes than all the news we have today. Is it that news has lost its gravitas?

One of our economy's most important deals is the arrangement a consumer has with brands. It exists in the home, on the roads, on the shelf, and yes, on the television. See, we too often take for granted in our business the role the consumer plays in the television business. Sure we count eyeballs and want that upscale 18- to 49-year-old with a high discretionary spending capacity and a desire to go on long motorcycle rides with his friends without having too many pit stops, but what is HE getting out of it?

Blah, blah, end of media as we know it. Blah, blah, end of 30-second spot, blah, blah. OK, you get the idea. We've all heard (and most of us have made) various allusions to the changing media environment -- and some have gone so far as to predict the apocalyptic end of the 30-second spot. In my past columns, I've made clear that I think there is life in conventional advertising for at least a while yet, but that advertisers, agencies and media owners alike are increasingly under pressure to find alternatives that provide for effective communication and that involve …

The last decade has been littered with attempts by governing parties to regulate, deregulate and/or re-regulate the media. There are lots of unresolved biggies, though, among the following....

In the late 90s, The WB went from airing sitcoms that targeted an ethnically diverse audience to courting the teenage demographic. With their long roster of shows including "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Dawson's Creek," "Charmed," "Popular," "Felicity," "Angel," "Seventh Heaven," "Gilmore Girls," "Everwood," "Smallville" and "One Tree Hill," the network succeeded with flying colors. Where is the programming for that demographic now?

At one level, the spat between Viacom and Google's YouTube that finally went legal yesterday could be seen as the Goliath of Big TV, in the form of Viacom, calling out the David of Little TV, in the form of YouTube, to resolve their differences once and for all in a good old fashioned courtroom dust-up of biblical proportions. But it really isn't so easy a characterization. After all, David's big brother, in the form of Google, has a bigger cash pile and every bit as much legal muscle to bring to bear as Viacom, and will be more than …

If memory serves me well, ABC introduced a new season's promotional campaign -- I think referred to by the code name "Yellow" -- at the turning of the 21th Century, that played something like this: you (the viewer) love television, we (the broadcast network) love television, therefore we share something in common. We both love television and therefore you (the viewer) should watch ABC shows.