• by September 22, 2003

Hell Hath No Fury Like A Media Market Scorned: As far as hurricane's go, Isabel was not among the most media-savvy. Yes, she tore up the East Coast with enough ferocity to contribute to 19 deaths and leave tens of thousands of without power in the Carolinas, but she veered off the major media markets and, as a consequence, did not garner the kind of coverage she might have if she had stayed on her originally projected course through the mid-Atlantic states. Washington, DC/Hagerstown, MD, which ranks as the ninth largest Nielsen DMA, was the largest market significantly impacted by her fury. Baltimore, at No. 24, was the next largest market. While this didn't seem to hurt traffic to weather.com or ratings for The Weather Channel, Isabel amounted to little more than a mild tropical storm by the time she made her way to the top U.S. media market, thereby cheating the Riff out of a storm day telecommute.

In what can only be described as the makings of the ultimate hard driving machine, IBM has teamed up with BMW to develop software and new electronics systems that will power a new generation of high-performance vehicles. Upon making this announcement, the companies pointed out that such applications are expected to account for about 90% of future automobile innovation. While they did not disclose the source for those projections, the computer/auto team, which has dubbed itself the Automotive Software Foundry, somehow figures that software and electronics will account for 40% of the product cost of a car by 2010. That would be a big change from what Morgan Stanley analyst Stephen Girsky recently told attendees of the Television Bureau of Advertising's Forecasting Conference in New York. According to Girsky, auto union healthcare benefits now represent $1,100 per General Motors' car. "That's more that the cost of the metal," said Girsky, confiding, "I don't know what you talk about, but that's what I talk about at cocktail parties."

What is it about Time Warner and three letter acronyms? The market didn't react very well the last time the company formerly known (and soon to be known again) as Time Warner added three letters to its identity and investors haven't exactly been overjoyed at the prospects of an EMI pairing with AOL Time Warner's Warner Music division. News of talks to combine the UK's EMI (the home of the Rolling Stones and Norah Jones) with the Warner label (home to Madonna and Radiohead), sent AOL's stock nearly two percent at midday.

Fox didn't waste the Emmys to its greatest promotional effect, promoting "Skin" and other Fox shows. But is it just the RIFF that found the appearance of several Fox personalities -- including Wanda Sykes, "American Idol" host Ryan Seacrest and the trio of judges -- might have been more than a little strained? Sykes' on-the-spot interview of Larry David, co-creator of the current "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and "Seinfeld," seemed to annoy him and her passing out second-place awards to the losers earlier in the night wasn't funny, just in poor taste. Don't Lauren Ambrose ("Six Feet Under") and Kim Catrall ("Sex and the City") deserve better?

And just what was CBS anchor emeritus Walter Cronkite doing at the Emmys, anyway? He marginally knew Bob Hope, the subject of the Emmys' tribute, but wouldn't the tribute have better come from one of the hundreds of actors and actresses Hope worked with in the past 80 or so years, instead of a retired newsman who hasn't been in the anchor chair since before Gen Y was born? As far as the Riff is concerned, that's the way it was.