New Blood: A recent article in The Christian Science Monitor called for new media “sages” or at least a new breed of executives to replace the Turner-Redstone-Murdoch level, which is nearing retirement age. All due respect to Les Moonves, Jon Miller and the others whose names have been uttered, but the media business doesn’t need sages or hot shot executives.

The Fire This Time: I am still open to the possibility that we will not be at war by the end of February. Peace always has a chance, although in this case that chance looks to be slimmer than most corporate profit reports.

Dial F For Frustration: As I said in one of last week’s riffs, I moved to a town farther up the Connecticut coast last week. Nice place.

Ad Spanked Girls?: Mattel logged another successful quarter with the Barbie brand and the SF Gate went ballistic: “Profits jumped 35 percent at Mattel Inc., the world's largest toy company, in the fourth quarter, fueled by strong sales of its Barbie brand, which should be just a little bit frightening in and of itself, huge toy empire and the bulk of its profits still comes from this scary little doll, not to mention how you know such a declaration just means yet another million or so young brainwashed heavily marketed ad-spanked girls have been sucked into the skanky Barbie vortex, …

Better Check The Wack Attack: Pepsi has not gone “wack” with the hip-hop generation, as some published reports have suggested. The Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, led by DefJam mogul Russell Simmons, is talking boycott for the NBA All-Star weekend in Atlanta.

The Thick Red Line: Sometimes people that criticize advertising are really criticizing business practices, and that’s not working for anybody. Example: yesterday Jim O'Hara, director of the Georgetown University's Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth, came up with the stunning conclusion that beverage ads on TV primarily depict people "having a good time by consuming this product.

PB$: It's about time PBS will start running 30-second spots from its most generous underwriters, as it announced this week. I hate to sound like a pledge drive bleeding heart, but the need for PBS as a content source and as an ad vehicle has never been greater.

Serious Business: I can say this about the news media's coverage of the Columbia tragedy: I was surprised at the amount of true emotion I saw from several on-air personalities. It was almost like the tension created over Iraq had been broken by a real story that involved real lives and real families, and the people presenting it in print and on got hit hard by it.