• by November 7, 2003

Who's In Charge Of Penthouse? Who Cares? - This just in: Contrary to numerous reports today, Bob Guccione says he has not resigned as editor in chief and publisher of Penthouse magazine or as chairman and CEO of its publisher General Media Inc. General Media Inc., is the unit of Penthouse International, which last month filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection amid sagging sales. A number of major news organizations reported today that Guccione had resigned from the magazine he founded in 1965 as a thinly-veiled and raunchier imitation of Hugh Hefner's Playboy. Those reports said Milton Polland had been named chairman and acting chief executive of Penthouse. This afternoon, Penthouse released a statement denying those reports and assuring that Guccione remains very much in charge of the flagging media enterprise.

"OC" AND "24" CARAT GOLD -- Now that we've learned from Carat broadcast research maven Sharon Anne Brill what men 18-24 are not watching, who would like to know what young media planning and buying executives are watching? As it turns out, it's many of the same shows those young guys are supposed to be watching. During a recent training session with 22 of Carat's up-and-comers, Brill couldn't resist the opportunity to conduct some grass roots research and took a poll on their primetime favorites. Not surprisingly, Fox was the hands-down winner among Carat's twenty-something set. "It was overwhelmingly Fox," Brill tells The Riff. "Of my 22 respondents, I think 14 said 'OC' was their favorite, followed by '24' and the 'Simpsons.' Now if Carat would only join the Nielsen sample.

TIPPED OFF -- Not that anyone's necessarily interested, but the Riff thought we'd let you all know that we've decided to put a moratorium on some overused industry jargon. From this point on, the Riff will only use the word "bandwidth" to refer to forms of data spectrum. We will only use the word "silo" when talking about buildings that store agricultural grains. And we will mention the phrase "the space" to refer to spatial orientation. And if any of you think this represents some kind of new "paradigm" for the Riff, well, we'll ban that too, because we've reached an "inflection point," or is it "tipping point?"