Does the media business realize it's suffering from Acute Anxiety Disorder (AAD), an ailment spread by eating too much raw news?

Five weeks into the Major League Baseball season, attendance is up and fans are chanting "M.V.P." for their favorite players. But parts of Madison Avenue have picked up a different mantra, one that plays off the steroid debate.

Extensive details of Microsoft Corp.'s newest video game console leaked out on the Internet on Monday, three days ahead of the console's formal worldwide unveiling on MTV. Based on pictures and purported eyewitness accounts that made the rounds of the Internet over the weekend, the console will be known as "Xbox 360."

Primetime's biggest nights could be due for a shake-up when the fall schedules are unveiled this month. As broadcast network executives huddle inside their respective headquarters this week to screen series pilots, their decisions might well alter the most established lineups on television, including CBS on Monday, NBC on Thursday and ABC on Sunday.

The hoary clay pipes nailed to the ceiling of midtown Manhattan restaurant Keen's Chophouse would not have looked out of place in the hands of advertising veterans gathered last month to celebrate the 40th anniversary of direct marketing agency Rapp Collins Worldwide. In attendance were the agency's great and good, past and present: co-founders Stan Rapp and Tom Collins as well as Emily Soell, Pat Imbriale, Jerry Ricigliano, Russ Lapso and Walter Marshall. Also present were current chairman/CEO Gary VonKennel and Ed McNally, agency president of diversified services.

Taking a page from Web sites like Google, The Boston Globe announced today that it has started auctioning off the front half-page ad in its Sunday recruitment section.

Here is a look at some of the highlights, lowlights and sidelights of the 2005 management conference of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, which was held here Wednesday through Friday.

It is a signature of America's marketing and financial prowess, a world-famous tourist attraction and one of the country's most coveted marketing communications venues: Times Square. Awesomely bright and shamelessly gaudy, its billboards towering above the Broadway and 42nd Street neighborhood are also among the country's most effective -- and most expensive -- advertisements.

"Harvey Birdman" is the sort of name you might hear David Letterman repeating as a non sequitur several times during "The Late Show" on CBS. In fact, Mr. Birdman is of increasing relevance to Mr. Letterman and his NBC counterpart, Jay Leno. He is the protagonist of "Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law," a campy animated program about a superhero-turned-not-very-bright-lawyer.

Cable networks Nickelodeon and Cartoon were busy last week writing kids upfront business, particularly with advertisers determined to get into the pre-Christmas "hard eight" weeks and pre-Easter weeks, but the general entertainment upfront in cable has yet to take off.