Television executives reach for reset button

Broadcasters have marked 2009, their worst year in recent memory, by seeking a term other than "television" to describe the business of captivating couch potatoes. An existential crisis is gripping TV executives, who now prefer to call their output "video". They face what newspaper executives witnessed a decade ago - big cash cow businesses in inexorable decline. The consumption of broadcast media has fragmented across hundreds of cable channels, countless mobile phones, the YouTube broadcasting website, as well as TV's own digital ventures, such as Hulu and the BBC iPlayer. This all leaves the broadcast business at a critical moment. As advertising - the industry's lifeblood - congeals, the threatened incumbents at the top of broadcast TV must redefine their businesses if they are to find growth once more.