THE PRESS RELEASE DOTH PROMOTE TOO MUCH - You know those local people meters Nielsen's been rolling out in major TV markets nationwide that have been causing so many conniptions? The ones that certain major broadcast groups have been trying to derail, ostensibly because of a faulty methodology or lousy samples? Well, as it turns out, they're reporting that many more people are watching TV than the old meter/diary system they've replaced. At least they are in New York, one of the first markets to be converted to the new meters, affectionately known as LPMs.

VYING FOR A SHARE OF THE ADVERTISING POT, ONE BLOG TRIES IT WITH, WELL, POT -- We have to confess that we're still a bit boggled by blogging, so when we found ourselves in the midst of a group of some of the industry's best-known bloggers this week we felt a little out of our element. We did learn some new things about the emerging micromedia marketplace, but we still came away scratching our heads over just why so many people are doing it, and what the actual business model is behind it.

WHY IS THERE EVIL? -- It's a question we ask ourselves repeatedly, but until Bob Garfield posed it to us today in San Francisco we hadn't really understood why. It's one of those things that defy explanation, Garfield explained to us, and a roomful of online marketing experts, during a presentation of his Chaos Scenario at MediaPost's OMMA West conference.

WHO KNOWS WHAT EVIL LURKS IN THE HEARTS OF AD MEN? -- Apparently, the shadow knows. No, not the old-time radio program, but the new-time newspaper advertising technique that's causing a stir within the print medium and a rift between church and state.

WE MAY HAVE REACHED THE END OF THE 500-CHANNEL UNIVERSE, 395 CHANNELS SHORT -- When last we riffed, we talked about how fragmentation in a print medium - book publishing - is on a trajectory in which the number of books published each year might eventually be greater than the number of people who read them. It seems the same fate may be confronting a rapidly growing electronic medium: cable TV.

READING, WRITING AND SOME STARTLING ARITHMETIC -- It's no surprise that new consumer-generated media technologies like blogs and self- publishing software are fragmenting media like never before, giving the potential for every man, woman and child to become not just media consumers, but media purveyors. The big question is who's consuming all this micro media content? According to some new research, not nearly enough people.