• by John Gaffney , April 10, 2003

Sense At The FCC?: At the National Association of Broadcasters convention earlier this week, Michael Powell suggested a possible resolution of media ownership that could bring a lot of sense to the current debate. Instead of loosening all media rules governing the big media conglomerates, he suggested reviewing all merger proposals on a case-by-case basis. That means that if the media ownership rules are relaxed, companies like Viacom and Newscorp will need to pass through an FCC advisory board before they make any major purchases. This is a good buffer between media conglomerates and bad deals. It brings a sense of restraint to a process that has media companies chomping at the bit to swallow smaller entities. Bottom line, it brings Powell back to center in the media ownership debate, and that's where the chairman should be.

Gimme That Popcorn: Is Faith Popcorn right this time? In the 80s she predicted that we would all be rich, do pink drinks at happy hour, go home and watch the VCR and just "cocoon." She was dead on the money. Now she says we will go overboard on patriotism. Patriotic advertising and messaging are bound for marketing glory says Faith. I say watch out. This is not the age of Xenoglobia, as she says. This is the age of cynicism. This is the age of cultural deconstructionism. Watch out with the flag and red, white and blue packaging. We are the most compassionate and powerful nation on earth, but marketing products is a different thing.

At The Buzzer: I was researching the story about MindShare and OgilvyOne's merger last night very close to deadline when I made the grave error of trying to navigate Ogilvy's website for information. I didn't make the deadline. Discuss.