Television finds unlikely ally in troubled economy

It's been a tough run for the television business, with all the buzz around new media and those killer devices that let audiences skip right through commercials. But fortunes may be turning for the TV industry, at least for the moment. A number of media executives have indicated this week that TV advertising sales are weathering the current economic storm better than media categories like radio and publishing, and perhaps even the Internet. For advertisers, the big advantage that TV holds over other media is that it still allows them to reach the biggest audiences at any given moment in time. It's also familiar to advertisers, who have decades of experience with 30-second spots and vast research about audience behavior. Other traditional media have not held up as well, with radio and publishing both hard hit by the downturn, continuing trends that were evident even in a healthier economy. Local advertising has been the culprit, deteriorating faster than national advertising across media, even TV.