In your undeserved Tuesday media column: Luke Russert speaks unconvincingly, sports columnists issue predictions unwisely, NYT ad revenue descends gently, and a PR guy threatens a journalist. Jokingly!

In your merit-based Monday media column: Dexter Filkins gets his reward, magazine ad pages rise (a bit), Dan Abrams expands his empire, the AP shows dead Marines, and you didn't donate to your local public broadcaster, did you?

According to this new promo, the Oprah Winfrey Network's coming along just as expected. [NYT]

In America, cigarette packs will soon come with graphic health warnings. That's nothing. In Europe, they already have those health warnings; and now, they want to totally ban branded cigarette packaging. But what about the tragic destruction of coolness?

It is time to check in on American Apparel, our most favorite near-bankrupt beauty-positive spandex-based fashion retailer. Employees are stealing! Employees are emailing us funny stories! And AA is trying to class up its porn!

Fool America once with bullshit magic "Easytone" shoes that will fail to give you a perfect ass (unlike doing squats): shame on Reebok. Fool America twice with "Easytone" clothing with ludicrous "resistance band" "toning" pseudoscience: shame on America.

The amorphous "Magazine Industry" continues its Quixotic—nay, nonsensical quest to save itself from decline by placing ads that urge people to read magazines into magazines, which the people in question are, necessarily, already reading.

Good news, slack-jawed internet sheeple: researchers now believe that no matter how many unskippable 30-second advertisements they lard onto online videos, you'll continue to watch them, like the passive, yielding consumers you are. Your cat video addiction knows no bounds.

In your finally Friday media column: Katie Couric rebukes the Today show, rumors of payment problems at Time Out NY, magazine ad pages are up modestly, and Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck lose Philly, and morning television funneez.

When Brooklyn Law School gave Diesel permission to shoot an ad in their library, they thought it would promote the virtues of learning or something. Instead, a bunch of models in their underwear rubbed themselves all over everything.

"Don't visit www.ComingNovember2010.com," said a billboard posted by a road in Smithfield, North Carolina. The message was signed, "Satan." Come to find out it's just a dumb church website. That Satan really isn't as bad as they say. [News-Observer]

Under a law signed by President Obama last June, all cigarette packs sold in the U.S. must have anti-smoking messages covering 50% of the front of the package starting next year. Here's what the FDA is proposing.

The annual godless atheist humanist War on Christmas starts just as early as the Corporate American Christmas Season, and with equal fervor. For at least the third straight year, atheists have chosen to assault god-fearing Americans, with advertisements. Godless advertisements.

CNN anchor John King got so frustrated with his "magic" computerized touch-screen wall before the elections that he had a "meltdown" and told crew "I wish I brought a gun to work." To shoot the wall, one hopes.

The message of this baffling ad for the Washington Post iPad edition seems to be that technology is too difficult for newspaper journalists to master, who are generally old and confused and prone to yell strange things at one another.

If you've ever discussed your "skin issues" on a blog, Facebook, or Twitter, good news: the Unilever corporation was listening in!

A 30-second ad on Conan O'Brien's new TBS talk show will cost $30K-$40K, the same price that NBC charges for a comparable ad on Jay Leno's show. That's fair, since TBS is the Jay Leno of cable networks. [NYT]

This is the first poster for the Mel Gibson comedy The Beaver, and... um? It's just one big joke about Mel Gibson telling us that he's crazy. I mean, who are the ad wizards that came up with this one??!

It's bad enough that these do-gooders hid their do-gooder message inside an innocent popcorn ad. But having an actor planted in the movie audience, to magically join the ad? We're never, ever learning first aid, just to protest this. [Copyranter]