ABC Gets Touched By Something: CBS claims the franchise, but through the first week of the new primetime season it appears that ABC has been touched by an angel. The alphabet network was the only one of the Big 4 to post a significant ratings gain over premiere week 2002.

Call it the battle of the media trade acronyms, but the MPA took a few shots from the ARF last week. The Magazine Publishers of America was besmirched twice during Thursday's sessions on the Advertising Research Foundation's new media model, once for lacking credibility and another time for acting like a research Luddite where print ad responsiveness research is concerned.

Have A Coke And A Smile, Or A Beer And A Diaper. Contextual media planning may be the future of the business, but it is not without its pitfalls.

Grim Reaper? Tony Randall: dead or alive? Well, it's been a while since the Riff has played that one and to show how rusty we are, it turns out Randall is very much alive. And just to prove it, Randall, who is best known for his role as Felix Unger on the long-running ABC's sitcom "The Odd Couple," will appear in a new campaign talking about death.

Hell Hath No Fury Like A Media Market Scorned: As far as hurricane's go, Isabel was not among the most media-savvy. Yes, she tore up the East Coast with enough ferocity to contribute to 19 deaths and leave tens of thousands of without power in the Carolinas, but she veered off the major media markets and, as a consequence, did not garner the kind of coverage she might have if she had stayed on her originally projected course through the mid-Atlantic states.

What are the industry's leading brand-builder's leading brands? You'd probably not be surprised to learn that New Yorker Publisher David Carey's is Apple Computer. After all, he's been featured in their print ad campaign.

Will Winston Sell Good Like A Cigarette Should? That's what Madison Avenue will surely be pondering for the next several quarters as results from deathstick marketer R.J.

You've got to admire Billboard magazine's offer to get behind the industry it covers with a free ad campaign targeting the piracy of recorded music, but we're wondering if the media strategy wouldn't be more effective if it were using billboards with a lower case b. It's not that the 109-year-old music industry weekly doesn't have a great B-to-B reach.

Consumer Reports, a magazine known for putting heat on defective and unreliable products, has issued a recall for its two top editors. That editorial director Julia Kagan and exec editor Eileen Denver got the boot comes as no surprise to the Riff.