Maybe it's time for someone to revive "Nashville Star," the country singing competition series that ran on USA Network for five successful seasons before it was snatched up by NBC, where it endured grievous creative mishandling during a summer run and suffered a desultory demise. I say this because "Nashville Star" was often referred to as a country version of "American Idol," and to judge from the crush of former "Idol" contestants on the CMT Music Awards earlier this week, it would seem that the country music audience can't get enough of aspiring young hopeful

Set-top-box-based return-path data is collected passively via the box, which mitigates some measurement challenges, such as non-cooperation and fatigue, in the button-pushing panel of the current currency. However passive data collection has its own set of challenges. While tuning to a network may be recorded because the set-top box is turned on, do we know if there is actual viewing occurring?

Billie Gold, VP of Research and Programming at Carat, has a unique perspective on the media landscape. After entering the industry at MTV in the early days of cable, she followed a path that led her through the agency world. In my interview with her, Billie talks about how she got into the media business, how agency research differs from network research, the future of multitasking, the upfront, and how the media marketplace will change based on the new 2010 census figures. Billie also offers some perspective on set-top-box data, social media, cross platform and what makes a network program …

If you have fond memories of the high drama at those annual Ewing barbecues, then you're likely to agree that the return of "Dallas" on June 13 just might be the most exciting television event of the year. That may sound like an exaggeration, but consider the context: The original "Dallas," which ran on CBS from 1978-1991, remains one of the most popular and powerful television series of all time. In terms of overall impact, not to mention audience size, there hasn't really been a series like it since.