On Sept. 18 in New York City at The Helen Mills Theater, MPG & MediaContacts, Havas siblings, will launch The Collaborative Alliance, a quarterly forum where content creators, technologists, distributors and researchers meet to vet their interactive televisual propositions (television, broadband, wireless and out of home).

A friend and I were having lunch the other day in New York when a mutual acquaintance stopped by our table. She grabbed my companion by the arm and dropped the Council for Research Excellence's set-top box data RFP on the table. "Can I get your answer today?" she asked politely...."Thank you for thinking of me, but I'm not really interested." he replied. When she was out of earshot, my friend picked up the abandoned request for proposals document and said to me, "Why would anyone who knows anything about set-top box data participate in this sham?"