• by November 13, 2003

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST - Riff is feeling a little smug today about the "breaking news" that developed Wednesday with a story, purportedly first broken by Matt Drudge's Web site and then picked up far and wide, reporting that Rush Limbaugh would return to the air Monday, Nov. 17. Just to set the record straight, that story was already broken by Riff colleague Paul J. Gough in a story he wrote for the MediaDailyNews a week earlier. ("Rush Limbaugh Poised To Return To The Dial," (MDN, Nov. 5). You can see it for yourself here.

NBC DOTH PROTEST TOO MUCH - Is the Riff the only one who thinks it's ironic that NBC is blaming Nielsen's efforts to make Hispanic Americans a more representative part of the sample for declining network TV ratings among young adult men. Even if it is true, it only demonstrates that young adult male ratings were inflated to begin with. We also think this finger-pointing is a little weird coming from NBC, which just happens to own Telemundo, and stand to be one of the big beneficiaries of having an accurate representation of Hispanics in the Nielsen sample.

THE PLOT THICKENS - As if we - and just about everyone else - hasn't already said enough about the missing young dudes, we nonetheless feel compelled to relate what we learned of a new and somewhat related mystery when we placed a regular check-in call to Carat Insights guru Rob Frydlewicz. While others on Madison Avenue are still trying to locate the whereabouts of men 18-24, the Frydlewicz was busy searching for the suicidal poet Sylvia Plath. "I'm doing a Google search," said Frydlewicz, "I'm trying to find out when she killer herself." Normally, we'd think such a comment wouldn't necessarily have anything to do with the business at hand, except for two things: 1) The Riff already knows that Frydlewicz is prone to some creative and unconventional thinking about media usage patterns; and 2) Frydlewicz told us there is a Sylvia Plath "connection" to the "declining patterns of male viewing." He said we'd have to wait to find out exactly what that might be, but the Riff is guessing that it isn't because they've been spending a lot of time reading her poetry.