Broadcast networks are in big trouble this season if federal regulators add being derivative to the list of TV trespasses. Networks are copying their own series, sometimes with a third or fourth edition ("CSI," "Law & Order") or putting on shows that have the whiff of copycat about them ("The Contender" vs. "The Next Great Champ").

It does not yet have a dean. Or a faculty. It doesn't have a curriculum or a single student. But City University's new graduate journalism school does have an amazing heritage: Jimmy Breslin. Tom Wolfe. Homer Bigart. Red Smith. Marguerite Higgins.

As Sen. John Kerry spoke to supporters at a campaign event in New York City's East Village Tuesday afternoon, the swift boat controversy that has enveloped his run for the White House in recent weeks was on the minds of many of the journalists present.

President Bush said on Monday that political advertisements run by a broad swath of independent groups should be stopped, including a television advertisement attacking Senator John Kerry's war record. But the White House quickly moved to insist that Mr. Bush had not meant in any way to single out the advertisement run by veterans opposed to Mr. Kerry.

A new advertising campaign satirizing the Republican financial support of Ralph Nader's independent campaign for the presidency sums up the effort this way: Bush-Nader '04.

The MTA has decided to remove a bright electronic advertising screen at the top of the Cortlandt Street subway station, near Ground Zero, after a lawmaker argued it would interfere with ceremonies marking the anniversary of 9/11.

The men's high bar individual final last night in Athens exemplifies what infuriates some people about how NBC (and other networks before it) present a taped Olympics from outside the United States - namely how they save the best events for prime time. And under NBC, the end of prime time has extended from 11 p.m. to midnight, the better to sell advertising to offset a $793 million rights fee.

If Roone Arledge invented the modern TV Olympics, Dick Ebersol has imploded it. Everyone wants to watch the Olympics, but they're just too unwatchable - too much, too fragmented, too staged, too jingoistic, too hyped, too commercialized, too long, too everything.

A three-year-old company plans to describe a new service today that will measure radio audiences in cars, combining global positioning technology and continuous tracking of the radio dial to challenge Arbitron, the dominant radio ratings provider.

Is Walt Disney Co. running out the clock on "Monday Night Football" on ABC?