RE: INTERPUBLIC -- Leave it to a brand named Interpublic to figure out how to once again make media and creative interdependent. If it hadn't, it might soon be known as Disinterpublic.

THE 62.5/1 RULE -- Want to hedge your bets in an unpredictable media marketplace? Place them not on big media content creators and distributors, but on advertising agencies.

WATCH OUT BELO -- When exactly did the bubble begin swelling again? It probably began right after the last one burst a half dozen years ago. It's taken a few years to correct itself, but the Internet has once again emerged as the central source transforming our industry--and our world. Okay, so that comes as no big epiphany. But when exactly did it flip back into dominance again? And will the current preoccupation prove as unrealistic as the last one did? <

WE HAVE SEEN THE CONSUMER AND SHE IS, WELL, AT LEAST HALF OF US -- ORLANDO, FL -- When some of the nation's biggest advertisers gathered here today to discuss the state of marketing, they all seemed to have the same basic question, and it seems like a remarkably fundamental one. "Who is our consumer," queried A.G. Lafley, chairman, president and CEO of the world's biggest marketer, Procter & Gamble Co., during his opening keynote. "Who is our customer?" echoed Stephen Quinn, senior vice president-marketing of the world's biggest retailer, Wal-mart, in a presentation that followed.

ADVERTISING AGE, SEPTEMBER 12, 2008 - Two years after Madison Avenue began its most earnest effort ever to diversify the complexion of the U.S.

SEPTEMBER 11, 2006 -We're sitting on the 7:55 to Grand Central, the same train we were on five years ago when the conductor announced that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Minutes later, we crossed over the Harlem River into Manhattan and had a perfect view southward of the smoking tower.

WE MADE THE POST, FOX NEWS TOO -- Things were getting better in our town since the tragic murder of two beloved merchants nearly two years ago cast our bucolic burb into tabloid central for the better part of a week. The Community is no longer for sale - the local movie theater, that is.

COMO ESTA USTED, NIELSEN -- Nielsen's decision to conduct a test of a new financial incentive plan on its live TV ratings samples in New York and Los Angeles marks another fissure in the line separating media research pragmatism and Puritanism. Testing new research methods on live samples is normally deemed verboten, because the tests can impact the behavior of panel members, which can skew the results of ratings that are used as the currency for advertising buys and programming decisions.

PRESS HERE TO RESET -- In case anyone hasn't noticed yet, we're into a new kind of buyer's market. This isn't one of those every decade-or-so, cyclical market corrections in which network CPMs simply roll back a point or two, allowing buyers to keep their faces safe with clients for another day.

A TALE OF TWO MEDIA CONGLOMERATES - If the story behind the most recent uncoupling of CBS and Viacom were made into a major motion picture, it would be adapted from a Charles Dickens classic. It would be produced by a Viacom studio.