What more is there to say about that profoundly disturbing performance by Miley Cyrus at this year's MTV Video Music Awards that hasn't already been said, as the resultant late-summer controversy rages on?

It's 6:13 AM EDT.One million seconds from the moment this column posted, the face of TV game shows - and possibly television as we know it -- could change forever, thanks to what clearly is one of the most ambitious TV programs ever to make it to network prime-time TV: NBC Universal's "The Million Second Quiz."

You may have seen the recent New York Times story claiming that nostalgia is good for you That was all the justification I needed to embark on a mini "Leave It to Beaver" marathon. NetFlix, God bless them, is a veritable time machine, with more than enough shows to make me nostalgic for every period of my life. But "Beaver" is special.

Fox's "Dads won't debut until Sept. 17, yet it is already the most talked-about new series of the 2013-14 broadcast television season. That isn't necessarily a good thing, unless the old saying that "there is no such thing as bad publicity" proves true in the case of this unsurprisingly controversial sitcom, which its critics are insisting will be an affront to everything that is good and decent in our society. I'm not sure that's true, but many things about it are certain to offend many people.

I'll admit it: I wrote the above headline without any actual evidence to support so direct a declaration. But since this is the summer of word of mouth, when buzz and tweets and water-cooler chat and social media activity suddenly seem to count more than hard numbers in determining the success of television programming in its many forms, I figure, why not?

Back in January, I wrote an article about the pending Nielsen purchase of Arbitron and how that might affect the media business should the acquisition take place. I polled several media executives from a range of companies. Only two would go on the record or would agree to be quoted by name in the article. Such is the sensitivity of this issue that continues even today.

There seems to be a consensus in polite society that "everyone" hates reality television, which, given the clear ratings to the contrary, is obviously just another variation on that old saw "I only watch PBS." This line of thinking seems to be driven by men: male critics, bloggers, cocktail party bores, husbands and boyfriends who truly do hate the reality television that their jobs, spouses and girlfriends inflict on them.

The press reported that in a letter to CBS CEO Les Moonves, Time Warner Cable boss Glenn Britt offered to make CBS available to its cable subscribers on an " la carte" basis: Customers would have to specifically request the CBS network in order for it to be added to its subscription package, and secondly, TWC would pass the cost, which would be set by CBS, directly on to its subscribers without taking an incremental fee for inclusion of the channel. By implication does this imply:

How do these things happen? Better yet, why? The U.S. premiere this week, on BBC America, of a series that will be among the most talked-about dramas of the year comes exactly one week after the announcement from Fox that it is going to produce an American version of this very same show.

Gayle Fuguitt, the new CEO of the Advertising Research Foundation, is a prize win for the organization and for the industry at large. This research titan comes from a distinguished 30+ year career at General Mills, where she ascended to officer of research and transformed the market research department to the global consumer insights department, which helped center the focus on actionable insights and analytics to drive growth.