Is WPP channeling Frank Zappa? Probably not, but they are exorcising the ghost of Madison & Vine. In April, WPP's media agency, MindShare, dropped MindShare Entertainment as a stand-alone practice and squeezed it into a unit called "Invention." The MindShare brass appears to have reached a conclusion shared by many in the industry - that so-called branded entertainment is not a discipline unto itself but simply another paintbrush in the toolbox.

To many Americans, summer means baseball. I am not one of those people. Yet every year I go to the ball park. I am quite content to stuff my face with hot dogs, nachos, beer and peanuts. By the time I am done eating, it is already the fourth inning. I suffer until the seventh-inning stretch and then say my good-byes. Still, despite my misgivings about the game itself, perhaps it can provide some insight into the game of advertising.

Recently, a good friend of ours (we'll call him Marlon) was exploring career opportunities with a respectable global ad agency when the conversation took an interesting turn. At a time when job-seekers are proceeding carefully, Marlon was pondering which of many varied opportunities to take.

I've been writing for this column for close to three years now, and a few days ago I took a couple of leisurely moments to breeze through some of my old pieces, which made me think that it might be time to recap - for my own edification, if nothing else: a compendium, if you like, of the new consumer. Who are they, and what makes them different?

Mark Twain once quipped, "When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear." When longtime WNBC news anchor Sue Simmons dropped her F-bomb on poor Chuck Scarborough, she maybe should have chosen counting.

As I write this, I've got summer on my mind. And it's not just the sweltering heat in New York City where Media magazine is based, or the fact that the air conditioning was on the fritz in the offices of MediaPost (which publishes this magazine) during the earliest heat wave I can remember in this region.

It wasn't until 1993 that NBC branded Thursday nights "Must See TV," but almost a decade before, viewers and advertisers alike had decided that on their own, thanks to audience-attracting programming like Cheers, Night Court and The Cosby Show. Of course, that was just the beginning: Soon there would be Seinfeld, Will & Grace and Friends.

"It's been one of those crazy days," Richard Kirshenbaum exclaims as he welcomes me to his headquarters. It's tucked into a corner space on the sixth floor of a tall building on Varick Street with larger-than-life windows offering up downtown New York City. Phones ring. Papers flutter. His assistant is out of the office. Piles of proofs and documents clutter his desk; he protests he's "usually not that messy." But who cares about disorder when you've got walls dressed with gorgeous art? No LeRoy Neiman lithographs here. Paintings and prints from photographers like Cindy Sherman and Melvin Sokolsky, as well …