With prime-time television advertising costs in the multi-millions per minute, how much did the media lose by not running ads for almost two months? Or didn't you notice?

Is it possible that the American viewing audience has become so accustomed to "tuning out" commercials that we failed to notice when the ads were no longer there?

The major corporate news centers like CNN and FOX, as well as General Electric's NBC, Westinghouse's CBS, and Disney's ABC, all went without commercial advertising for nearly eight weeks. It doesn't matter whether the advertisers or the media decided to pull their commercials out of respect, the lost revenue had to be enormous. It was also a "first" for television. Since Sarnoff invented it, advertising has always paid for television programming.

And what about ad agencies? Those big time brokers of block time who fight so hard for the seventeen percent commission they get for bulk rates to large consumer companies and politicians? Not to mention all the boutique houses large and small who have taken over the creative end of ad development. Those companies had to suffer too.

Besides Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, international banking and investments of lower Manhattan, the Madison Avenue hucksters must rank right up there as one of New York City's major industries. How could they go without "the nut" for so long?

Yet, we don't hear anything about the media's financial loss to terrorism. Maybe, they themselves aren't cry babies and are being stoic about it, but what about the financial wizards of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and other newspapers? Surely, such a staggering loss is something they would cover. Compare it with what you've heard about the airline and tourist industries.

Sometimes the most interesting thing is what the so-called investigative and watchdog people of our Fourth Estate do not cover. I've grown accustomed to this since my main focus is on the absolute rip-off of the public's entitlement money.

Could it be that media is already subsidized by the government? That it's no longer a private enterprise? That the government has its propaganda machine completely under its thumb?