Since the last draftee reported for duty in December 1972, Uncle Sam has had to hustle to staff an all-volunteer armed force. In the case of the U.S. Army, that meant recruiting 80,000 new soldiers every year - essentially replacing more than the entire workforce of BellSouth every 12 months.

They had to go ahead and do it, didn't they? They just couldn't resist. Despite the legions of naysayers who questioned the wisdom of extending the saga of the cranky but lovable Geico Cavemen from 30-second ads to a half-hour sitcom, ABC Entertainment honcho Steve McPherson went ahead and flashed the greenlight.

In the last few months, tabloids and gossip magazines have had a field day reporting on who has just checked into rehab, shown signs of an eating disorder, or gotten arrested. The stars of these stories are usually young celebrities who could potentially serve as examples for today's youth, raising the question, what happens when the shining role models in the spotlight are consistently falling apart?

QTubeTV, which bills itself as the conservative YouTube, shows a flair for the sensational worthy of the New York Post. Its home page gives top billing to Michelle Malkin's "First They Came" video with the words "Banned on YouTube" in large red type.

Lawyers' ads may soon be as abundant as lawyer jokes. A deal between LexisNexis and online ad agency Spot Runner will allow law firms to create their own local ads using Spot Runner's TV commercial-building tools.

Score one for Bono. A federal court last month ruled that "fleeting expletives" should not be judged as indecent speech. This ruling includes comments made by the Irish rocker and humanitarian during NBC's broadcast of the Golden Globes in 2003, in which he blurted out: "fucking brilliant."

For a century-old medium, radio sure is getting hot. Online giant eBay last month said it will let advertisers and agencies bid for radio advertising time through its Media Marketplace on most of the country's stations.

Come this fall, the first break in every primetime show on Telemundo will be limited to 60 seconds. The Spanish-language network is a small player, but it's "Power Pod" is a reaction to a groundbreaking shift in the buying and selling of TV time that is becoming the dominant issue for all networks in this upfront.

Mark Cuban is enlisting the wisdom of crowds to generate original shows for his all-high-def channel HDNet. The brash billionaire began soliciting ideas for new shows on his Blog Maverick site in recent weeks out of frustration with the parade of knock-offs coming his way via traditional development methods.

Will apple's new iphone do for multimedia mobile gadgets what the iPod did for portable music players? Probably not, according to a new study by technology research firm In-Stat.