There are certain signs of the season that tell you we're very much in springtime. The familiar jingle of the ice cream truck. Showing some faith that the person who just sneezed on you indeed does only have allergies and not some raging Ebola-driven plague. And the sudden invasion of giant balloons in midtown Manhattan. Fox likes balloons. Big, "Glee"ful balloons. They also like perky "Glee"ful cheerleader types to hold them. And apparently they have a show that they are fond of that's based on a high school social activity.

Jaffer Ali, President of Vidsense, can be labeled a provocateur because of his very different views on the future of the media. And yet, his thought-provoking opinions and insights cannot be easily dismissed. Jaffer has been on the cutting edge of the digital business for over 25 years and has experienced the rise and fall and rise of media from many vantage points.

NBC wants to prove its commitment to supportive, creative development. And they claim that they're our Eastern European hooker. I don't know, but that's really what they said. Also, "Parenthood" defines their brand. I'm not sure how that all works together, but I'm willing to see where they're going with this. But most of all, NBC right now is about More. More colorful, mainly. Which is pretty much what you want from your peacocks who aspire to be Eastern European hookers.

How can marketers, communicators, advertisers, digital strategists, etc. help drive support for Haiti from their very strong brand and service platforms?

Bring back "Heroes" -- online. NBC's kept the show on the fence for long enough. It's past the point of diminishing returns for a prime-time television series. Not only does it not deliver the audience of a tentpole series, it's not even delivering as a pup-tentpole TV series anymore. But it still delivers a sizable amount of impressions online.

It may have fallen out of favor with critics during its final season, but Fox's "24" hasn't lost its ability to thrill viewers -- or challenge broadcast standards. I thought after eight years of mass killings, graphic bloodshed and brutal violence there was nothing more this groundbreaking series could do to shock me, but the climactic sequence of this week's episode, in which rogue counter-terrorism agent Jack Bauer literally and without hesitation tortured a man to death, proved me wrong.

Set-top-box data offer granularity that, with some standardization and agreed-upon rules, could add to our overall knowledge of media usage. But where to start? As a first step toward standardization and fuller implementation of set-top-box data as another measurement tool, the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) has embarked on an ambitious project to collect, collate and interpret all the myriad types of terms that are being developed as part of the set-top-box data measurement initiative. The result is a comprehensive lexicon of set-top-box data terms and their definitions.

Google, amongst others, invests $23 million in addressable TV technologist Invidi. Wikipedia'd queries resulted in the discoveries of the following subterranean activities leading to a pandemic of addressable TV deployments:

The success of big box retailers is a study in how consumer demand can be satisfied through supply chain logistics. Thousands of vendors that supply a big box today coordinate shipping and inventory by integrating into the very software systems of the merchants they supply. Consumer TV click responses, with the cooperation of brand advertisers, should also be stored in these same inventory systems.

Rachel Dreyfus is vice president, marketing intelligence, at Time Warner Cable. Dreyfus currently leads all aspects of Time Warner Cable's consumer research and competitive intelligence. In this interview, she talks about some of her current projects, the Nielsen Three Screen Study, and changes in her side of the business over the past five years.