• by February 13, 2004

FIFTY BILLION-PLUS REASONS TO SKIP OUT ON A FOUR As' MEDIA SHOW -- The Riff has heard some lame excuses for conference no-shows - "I misplaced my PDA." "My client flew in for a meeting at the last minute." "I thought you meant Feb. 12, 2005." - but Brian Roberts' seemed more plausible than most. Actually, we're not even sure the Comcast chief ever even offered an explanation when he bailed out of a keynote speech scheduled for Thursday morning's session of the American Association of Advertising Agencies conference in Orlando, but few of the show's attendees were surprised by the sudden cancellation. Just disappointed. It's rare that trade show attendees get such a front row, center seat for anything as big as Roberts' $50 billion hostile bid to take over Walt Disney Co., so they were naturally a little let down by the development. Weirder still, to some of the show's attendees, was the irony of Disney's board grimly meeting just down the road from the conference site. Some swore that if they listened hard enough, they could hear the high-pitched squeal of a mouse caught in a trap. Ouch! Meanwhile, the Riff is still waiting to hear how another media conference no-show, Media Kitchen's Paul Woolmington, can top Brian Roberts' explanation.

TARGETCAST HITS A BULLSEYE - To some of media agency biggies, Steve Farella, the highly vocal and very articulate founder-CEO of media boutique TargetCast TCM, has been an annoyance. Now he's a factor. While he was operating around the fringes with low-profile ad accounts, Madison Avenue could discount much of Farella's proselytizing about a new communications revolution and how it is fueling a shift from marketers' dependence on traditional media to a wide range of new options, was well, just that, a lot of proselytizing. But now that Farella has wrested a serious piece of business (the $25 million financial services account for TIAA-CREF) from a major media shop (WPP's MindShare), they have to take TargetCast seriously. Okay, the account may not be as sexy as the Brown & Williamson account shift (from MediaCom) that put Paul Woolmington's Media Kitchen on the radar screen, but it's a pretty good start.

NEW YORK'S FAVORITE PAPER SHENANGIGANS - It really must be Friday the 13th. First the Riff forgets to bring its cell phone along today, then its email access goes down, next we learn our marker order to buy a bunch of Disney shares never went through Tuesday afternoon. But the bad luck doesn't end there. It seems to be circulating through New York City tabloids as well. According to an article in the New York Post, the paper's archrivals at New York's Daily News are putting pressure on a Manhattan-based outdoor media company to take down a billboard sponsored by the Post that faces the News' Midtown Manhattan offices. And we can understand why. The ad touts the Post's circulation gains. It reads: "New York Post Circulation: 652,427," with the last two numbers blurred, imitating a whirring odometer. The figures are followed by the words, "Go ahead and stare. They're real." That story never made it into the News, of course, though we're still waiting for the bulldog edition.