TiVo and other digital video recorders have rapidly caught on with consumers, so much so that they pose a significant threat to television station groups not owned by one of the major broadcast networks.

After some dogged investigating, NBC yesterday offered up its answer to television's big mystery of the fall, the case of the disappearing young, male viewer. And in this television version of Clue, the solution by NBC was a young Hispanic man, in the living room, with the remote. Or perhaps more accurately, without the remote.

Creating an independently financed magazine is always a perilous activity, but the endeavor takes on more foolhardy dimensions when the publication is aimed at music fans.

Consumers being barraged by a relentless flood of pitches from the giant wireless service providers are bracing for an additional onslaught, to be unleashed as a result of rules taking effect Nov. 24 that allow consumers to keep their cellphone numbers when they change carriers within the same calling area.

Advertising agency Leo Burnett USA, part of the Publicis Groupe, said on Wednesday it had laid off 20 staff members as the ad industry faces additional pressure to streamline its work with clients.

As the case of the missing younger male viewers grows curiouser, as Sherlock Holmes might have put it, the presidents of the entertainment divisions of broadcast network television are weighing in with their worries.

Decades after Elvis Presley warbled "Viva Las Vegas," marketers, agencies and media companies are lustily joining the chorus, flooding the commercial culture with images of gambling and Las Vegas to woo consumers.

WPP Group's Soho Square, which counts Yahoo! as its only client, has lost its founder and managing partner, Elizabeth Talerman, the marketer said Oct. 31.