MTV's amazing record of hip has had incredible staying power, despite a fickle young target audience. Since the 1980s, MTV has figured out how to stay in vogue--remarkable, considering blazingly fast changes in popular culture and styles....

TV and drugs make for strange bedfellows--in TV scripts, occasionally in sports and sometimes, among actors and producers. But in Europe, accusing an athlete of drug use is enough to sideline a reputation--even if someone is found innocent later. Floyd Landis is the latest casualty.

In the throes of any war, you'll find people using ugly four-letter words. Few heard this kind of language in any old war films from the 1940s and 1950s. But in 2006, reality is in. And now PBS has a problem....

A recent Reuters headline read: "World Cup ratings equal 64 Super Bowls." In the U.S. right now, some TV executive, noting this, is working like a mad scientist trying to strategize how to get FIFA, the organizing body of soccer and the World Cup, to run the event every year--with commercial breaks.

There's nothing better than an apologizing TV executive--make that a wannabe TV executive. Steve Case, co-founder of AOL, is one who found that religion.

Lift up the hood on the successes on TV and in sports, and you'll see some baggage that should have slowed them down.

Now that we have a reality TV show about the retailer Macy's, why stop there? What about "Unwrapping Target"--following the drama of what motor oil to stock as the new auto season gets underway. How about "Unwrapping Ralph's," as employees ponder whether yellow peaches or tangelos should be the featured fruit.

The TV-on-cell-phone madness has just hung up. Merrill Lynch says it's essentially crazy for ESPN to continue selling its way overpriced, branded mobile phone service. Merrill expects ESPN to lose $135 million on Mobile ESPN.

Are we short on national morning, gabbing TV shows? Did we need one more?

CBS says its new Katie Couric-anchored "CBS Evening News" won't be revolutionary, but more evolutionary, when it relaunches this fall. CBS is finally understanding the new role of TV news.