Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and since I know that most of you have either left for the day or are reading this with dreams of cranberry sauce, turkey, and stuffing dancing on your plate, it might be a great chance for a slightly more light-hearted column.

I think you'd have to be living under a rock if you haven't heard about Sirius.

I'm not talking about getting your shopping completed early, everyone. I'm talking about the kind of marketing and operations surge that industry insiders are warning about in the next 30 days.

My colleague, Tom Hespos, kicked up a little dirt this week in his column about the increasing sway that seemingly small numbers of people have on the current state of debate regarding content in media.

Jeff Jarvis reported on the Buzzmachine that the $1.2 million fine levied on Fox for a recent airing of a sexually suggestive "Married By America" was brought about because three individuals bothered to write letters to the FCC. Seems a bit excessive, no?

Is advertising and marketing the sole domain of the marketers or is it possible that advertising and marketing is now the focus of the masses?

If you're like me, you probably had a heck of a busy week with business and industry events including Ad:Tech and the MITX Awards show. On the weekends I try and pick up the slack in my personal life.

Now that the gnashing of teeth in New York over the election results seems to have quieted a bit, I thought I'd take a look back at one element of the recent presidential election.

If any of you read the trades, were in attendance at Ad:Tech in New York, or read anything about Ad:Tech this week, you came across this piece of news: total online ad spend for 2004 is shaping up to be some $9.4 billion.

I read with interest an article on the results of a study released last week by Yahoo!. The study looked at 1,200 Internet users who read their newspaper offline at least three times a week, comparing their shopping habits.