F-bombs were dropping on the MTV Movie Awards Sunday night like ducks from the sky during hunting season. It was a display of potty-mouthed excess the likes of which I have never seen on live television. Adult men (and a couple of women) took the stage one after the other in giddy anticipation of that exciting moment when they would be able to let fire a naughty word or two (mostly the F word and the S word) in a misguided effort to impress the teens and young adults they so desperately need to buy tickets to their frequently lousy …

MPG held its Collaborative Alliance meeting in New York on June 3. At the meeting, a group of us who formed the Collaborative Set-Top-Box Data Committee posited a method to apply set-top-box data to help networks that are not rated by Nielsen to translate their data for use by the agencies and their national television buyers. As we stressed during the meeting, this is directional and not intended as a data comparison.

A couple of years ago, in the midst of Huntsville, Alabama's NASA denizens (approximately 15,000 abodes), the media community was informed that there had been a successful trial of addressable video commercial TV delivery to individual set-top boxes within the households. Open TV garnered credit for the innovation. The lead ad agency's media-propelled looping messaging was "substantial cost efficiency and diminished commercial tune-away." No one was able to breach their few-worded, guarded "proprietary" statement, which arose as a shield wall around the trial preventing inquisitors from penetrating its mysteries.

What does a smartphone have in common with a set-top box (STB)? Both focus on cloud computing, and both contribute to replacing the home PC for most consumers.

Chuck Lorre, the executive producer of CBS hits "Two and a Half Men" and "The Big Bang Theory" and the upcoming "Mike & Molly," is known for the clever vanity cards he posts before the closing credits of his shows. (They're archived at http://www.chucklorre.com/index.php .) His most recent, intended for CBS executives, should be of special interest to advertisers, as well. It reads as follows:

I first saw this week's episode of "Friday Night Lights" six months ago, right before it debuted on DirecTV, and it has haunted me ever since. Now that it is making its NBC premiere (Friday at 8 p.m.), I'm caught up in it all over again. Titled "The Son," it may be the most powerful hour of advertiser-supported television this season.

Ellen Romer, senior vice president of strategic planning at Experian Simmons, a division of Experian Marketing Services, has vast experience on the supplier side of consumer research. Here she talks about consumer trends and the company's new Simmons DataStream(SM) product.

Last week, for my TV Board column I submitted a 31-worded poem by Charles Simic, one of our poet laureates, that he had written about a tree, its leaves and fear. I thought it was applicable to our upfront process. MediaPost editor in chief Joe Mandese suggested that I provide an introduction for contextual purposes. I acquiesced. Moments later the upfront market inexorably moved forward.