Time Warner doesn't really believe the industry's current refrain--that media consolidation is dead. It wants to stay together for the long road trip.

What's one of the oldest continuing product placement activities on TV, where it is a dominant part of the TV experience? One of the most enduring product placement efforts has been with Nascar.

A study by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Creative Voices in Media and Fordham University says that media consolidation has been the fertile ground for indecency--that radio shows such as Howard Stern and Bubba The Love Sponge are prone to vulgarity because they are trying to lure advertisers.

No longer a truly live TV benefit, this Friday's "Shelter From The Storm: A Concert For The Gulf Coast" will allow celebrities to speak their political mind--but they won't be able to do it in a graphic way.

Poor cable industry. Now it is moaning that carrying all those proposed digital channels from local broadcasters will give it a big financial backache--as much as $115.6 billion in revenue from lost bandwidth, according to a report from the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.

The Parents Television Council (PTC) should look at the immoral victories -- the moral ones don't seem to make sense. The PTC wants to blame Hardees' poorly performing Paris Hilton TV ad, which featured her soaping down a Bentley and herself before downing a burger, for the 1 percent decrease in the burger chain's sales.

Broadcast television, newspapers, and middle-aged demographics don't sound like ingredients for an elixir in the competitive TiVo-iPod-Google media world. But Tribune Co. and The WB are looking for a remedy to their troubles with just these old-world elements. This past weekend, Variety looked under the hood at Tribune, while The New York Times sought to answer for The WB.

In the coming weeks, a number of broadcast and cable networks will be planning commercial-free benefits for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. National advertisers need to find sensitive ways to help. Comcast Cable yesterday came up with one -- giving away $10 million in advertising time from its local cable system to the American Red Cross so they can send messages to viewers about donations -- as well as educational pieces on what to do in the event of natural disasters.

To paraphrase former NBC executive Warren Littlefield: The things that scare us make the best TV shows - which is something programming executives should consider in this age of un-funny sitcoms. Socially inept, ego-centered characters on "Seinfeld," or central gay characters on "Will & Grace" don't seem much like scary material now. But at one time they did strike fear in TV network executives who believed that, in turn, viewers would fear them as well. Now there is a scary sitcom idea - floating around for sometime -- that no network has the stomach yet to schedule. It's …

U.S. advertising grew almost 6 percent in the first half of 2005 from the usual suspects--cable TV, Spanish-language TV, and of course, the Internet, according to yesterday's report released from Nielsen Monitor Plus.