• by April 1, 2005

ALL THE TVB NEWS THAT'S FIT FOR FITS - Want to know what's on the minds of advertisers these days? Apparently, it's not the marketers themselves that you'd want to listen to, but to the consumer and trade journalists who cover their business. At least that was the thinking of the Television Advertising Bureau's marketing conference planning team who assembled a panel of renowned ad journalists to tell the TV station community what their clients are thinking these days. But the TVB may want to think again before it invites ones of those scribes - New York Times ad columnist Stuart Elliott - back for an encore performance. Elliott seemed to lob more grenades, er questions, back at the audience than he actually answered.

While they didn't exactly ride him out of the Jacob Javits Center on a rail, Elliott did manage to transform what traditionally is a station/agency lovefest into the closest thing we've seen to an angry mob in the years we've been covering this trade show, especially when he posed a question about the quality of TV audience measurement that elicited a smattering of boos from, who else, a contingent of Nielsen Media Research execs.

"They're still using paper diaries," noted Elliott. "Jackie Gleason and Milton Berle's ratings are still being counted!" While we think Elliott may have been speaking metaphorically, we are waiting for a callback from CBS ratingsmeister Dave Poltrack on the results of those Nielsen overdecades reports.

Nielsen ratings weren't the only sacred kowtow that Elliott took on. He also went after the sacred institution of prime-time marriage. "Oh, you mean you all just watch 'Desperate Housewives,' but not 'Nip/Tuck' because it's on cable? Oh, come on!"

Maybe it was all of the journalist joustings, but it seemed to have an affect on how panelists spoke - or rather, didn't - to other journalists who actually covered the event.

Following a panel that was billed as "Agency Customers Speak Out On Local TV" - from what we could tell, only one of them, Zenith's Peggy Green, was doing all the speaking - a reporter approached another panelist, Initiative Media's Sue Johenning, for an additional comment.

Picture it: Minutes after her panel ended, still on stage, Johenning recoiled at the sight of a journalist's tape recorder like a vampire facing a cross. "I can't be interviewed without PR representative being present. It's corporate policy," she said. When the reporter, noted that she had just appeared in public on a panel and that "I didn't see [an Initiative Media PR person] lurking behind you," Johenning simply demurred: "Sorry, I can't talk!"

But perhaps the most bizarre journalistic encounter of the day was when a moderator asked the panel of ad industry journalists to tell him something, "I don't know." That's when Mediaweek Editor Michael Burgi shared an anecdote - and an image - that we still can't scrub out of our minds, telling the crowd he just received an email from a former Playboy centerfold who confided that Hugh Hefner is into "interracial gay porn." Gosh, we only get emails complaining to the editor about Riff columns.

POOR DONNY DEUTSCH -- First he loses DirecTV. Then flagship accounts Snapple, Mitsubishi, and Revlon. Now it appears the ad agency chief and part-time talk show host may be experiencing a more personal loss. Deutsch and his wife are "trying a trial separation," according to the New York Post's "Page Six" column. The Riff has been keeping close tabs on Deutsch's professional losses, which including the recent departure of Coors Light, tallies some $300 million in billings. We hope any matrimonial settlement isn't nearly so costly. Of course, Deutsch, who personally made millions when he sold his namesake agency to Interpublic, will always have Donald Trump, CNBC and some pretty big ideas.

IT TAKES A TOUGH MAN TO TENDER AN INDELIBLE AD CAMPAIGN -- Frank Perdue, the Maryland farmer who, with a little bit of help from Scali, McCabe, Sloves, revolutionized the poultry industry and gave chicken a brand name, died Friday following a brief illness. He was 84.