Technology allows us to consume information, news, entertainment and more not only with a mouse click, but with the remote control. Enter "remote control marketing," in which viewers are invited to use their TV remote to get product information, receive samples, request coupons, play games, cast votes and watch exclusive video -- without ever leaving the couch.

A few weeks ago I wrote a piece for TV Board entitled "See Spots Run? And Addressable Issue" querying our community about the efficacy of the current modes of television ad verification tracking. $70 billions worth. I sighted three companies -- Eloda, Nielsen's KeepingTrac and the 4A's Ad-ID initiative -- that all knocked on my door around the same time last month. They cited me back....

There was a time when you could run a 30-second prime-time television spot and be virtually guaranteed to reach the coveted 18- to 49-year-old audience any weekday of the year in droves. These days, the notion of daypart targeting as it relates to broadcast television is not quite so cut and dried. Consumers are rapidly embracing the flexibility and ubiquity of digital media. They are going online to consume programming on their own terms.

Today, we are nearing an auspicious occasion in all of our lives. Just as our college seniors around the country line up, preparing to walk across the stage to accept their diplomas, filled with pride, excitement, and perhaps a wee bit of trepidation, we all line up too: virtually, digitally. For we, America, are about to cross the stage of history on June 12, transitioning from the analog era to the digital age -- turning our "dials" as the graduates turn the tassels on their graduation caps. We should be just as proud as those college grads who spent the …

Often we only recognize important moments in retrospect -- but we already know that this Friday will be a watershed day in media. When analog TV signals are erased from the U.S. airwaves and replaced by digital, a small percentage of households will lose TV access, despite the availability of converter boxes and government coupon programs; but many others have been or will be introduced to new programming, ads and technologies as a result of the transition -- changes that could shift their viewing behavior forever.

Wikipedia links the fabled expression fee-fi-fo-fum to the English fairy tale "Jack and the Beanstalk" and the closely referenced tale of "Jack the Giant Killer."The story tells of a young man who was sent to the market one day by his parents - Bright House, Cablevision, Charter, Comcast, Cox and Time Warner - to sell their last unexploited possession: the ability to enhance the value of national commercial inventory....

When I began my media career in the mid-'70s in the TV and radio programming department as a secretary at full service advertising agency BBDO, the television buyers rarely talked about the TV spots. The creatives created 'em, the trafficker trafficked 'em and the viewer viewed 'em -- we hoped.

On June 2nd in New York City at The Helen Mills Theater, MPG & MediaContacts, Havas siblings, will stage its quarterly forum, The Collaborative Alliance, where content creators, technologists, distributors and researchers meet to vet their interactive televisual propositions (television, broadband, wireless and out of home).

Well, we've finally reached the end of Upfront Week, and CW is ready to go. So, to keep in the spirit of the Twitter-friendly CW demographic (and cast, according to one of the actresses on the network, who was "tweeting this"') and in the spirit of the up-tempo week, we'll try to keep this short. CW certainly cooperated -- they were done in 45 minutes. We were out so fast, the back of my jacket didn't even get a chance to wrinkle.

"It's dead: Jim." No, this isn't a "Star Trek" callback -- ABC has finally killed "According to Jim." There was no moment of silence to start the 2009 ABC Upfront to honor such an oft-decorated classic. No, silence is not something an upfront-ensconced media crowd does particularly well. "Sit Down and Shut Up" was left without a deal (by another network), not because it was an ill-conceived concept -- we media people just don't understand the phrase and would probably never have bought it.