Ever since ITV posted a £2.7bn loss for 2008 in March, the UK's leading commercial broadcaster has been reeling from one negative headline to another - culminating in the announcement that Michael Grade is to step down as executive chairman by the end of the year.
For some, Grade is a victim of problems that have long gone unaddressed, compounded by recession. For others, he is the latest in a long line of management figures who failed to implement the necessary structural and cultural changes to an organisation that has been in continual decline since the advent of Channel 4 in 1982 and Sky in 1989.
ITV's modern heyday was the period 1998-2000, when its monopoly was largely intact and control over the destiny of digital terrestrial TV lay in its hands. In 1999, the broadcaster raked in revenue of £1.9bn from a 31% market share, albeit eroded from the 40% mark five years previously.
Steve Platt, trading director at Aegis Media, who spent 15 years at ITV's sales house, says: "ITV had its highest revenue at the end of the '90s, peaking with the dotcom boom. Given its massive audience share, ITV was in a strong position to dominate digital TV at its inception. But it squandered the opportunity through a disastrous strategy that was the single biggest factor in its subsequent decline."
Having won the licence to launch the pay-TV platform ONdigital, ITV was unfortunate to lose BSkyB as a member of the consortium after a ruling from Brussels. However, its attempt to then compete with Rupert Murdoch by paying £315m for Nationwide League football matches - part of a £1bn investment that eventually forced the venture into bankruptcy - was ill-judged.
Jim McDonald, head of broadcast at MPG, suggests: "ITV paid inflated fees for second-tier football without properly calculating the return on that massive investment."
At the root of ITV's troubles was its painful consolidation from 15 original regional licences into one entity. At the time of Granada and Carlton's merger in 2003, ITV was still characterised by infighting. A former executive recalls: "I'd walk into the boardroom and one side would say ‘Good morning' and the other would say ‘No it isn't'. ITV could have owned the platform that became Freeview. Instead, shareholders on both sides were dysfunctional."
The price of the merger was the infamous contract rights renewal price-cap mechanism, agreed in the almost certain knowledge that ITV's share of audiences would fall in the face of increased multichannel viewing.
Platt says: "At the time, ITV thought it would be able to compete with ratings, but despite the best efforts of the sales teams, it grossly underestimated the growth of digital and Sky, which meant it couldn't compete, no matter what it did."
Even as a single ITV, the company's response to digital television is widely considered too little, too late, with the £175m acquisition of Friends Reunited symptomatic of board-level misunderstanding.
However, a former ITV director defends the acquisition. "It was logical to link shows such as This Is Your Life to Friends Reunited, but for all sorts of reasons, mainly because editorial didn't want to know, it was never integrated into programming."
The solution to ITV's predicament is to air content worth watching. On this score, the broadcaster can point to an audience share that has stabilised at about 22% and an unrivalled ability to attract three quarters of all TV households in prime time - 20 million watched the final of Britain's Got Talent.
McDonald notes: "If ITV1's aim is to provide a mass audience, it has done a creditable job. Its problem is that it is an ad-funded broadcaster when ad revenues are falling through the floor."
Deeper than that, ITV became reliant on external suppliers for much of its drama and entertainment programming, prevented from fully exploiting secondary rights by regulation. Grade vowed to overturn this in a content-led renaissance intended to boost ITV-owned commissions to 75%, but when global content chief Dawn Airey quit less than seven months into her role, the writing was on the wall.
"ITV's big shows have got bigger, but its small shows have got smaller and one counteracts the other," Platt notes. While Britain's Got Talent or The X Factor - neither of which are ITV formats - can command double-digit millions, last week the network suffered the worst ratings in its 54-year history, slumping to an all-hours share of just 16.1%.
The former ITV director says: "ITV employs a lot of people who have spent the past 30 years making TV shows, but are unused to multi-platform formats. Because the current regime can only deal with shiny, black-floored, mid-'90s entertainment shows, any innovative thinking gets driven out and they can't deliver on it."
The search for a new chief executive is underway, with contenders believed to include outgoing communications minister Lord Carter, BBC Worldwide chief executive John Smith and former BSkyB chief executive Tony Ball.
But will a new chief executive be able to find a way out? Turn the page to read what our panel of former ITV executives, analysts, agency planners and, not least, ITV itself believe the UK's leading commercial broadcaster should do next.
Industry experts offer their blueprints for securing the future of ITV:
Peter Bazalgette
Media consultant and former Endemol chief executive
The nation, not just ITV, needs commercial TV to function because it funds much of our creative content sector. We need to relax CRR and be far more flexible with product placement to stimulate ITV's production spend.
On the financial side, ITV's debt is too expensive because of the downgrading of its credit rating. Shareholders seem less than enthusiastic about a rights issue until a new chief executive is found, so God speed the headhunters. ITV's pension fund is a liability, but this might fade over the next few years if equity markets rise.
Ad-supported video-on-demand platforms such as Hulu or Canvas will be an important means of delivering content in future. ITV, over and above ITV.com, needs to be part of a prominent, well-branded service, which probably means co-operation with a partner. In-house production has suffered a drain of talent and tough decisions need to be made. Does ITV Studios belong with ITV or does it need to be merged, giving it a share in another worldwide content creator?
The production business certainly needs to be re-engineered. One way of achieving this without a merger is to make the division more independent, giving people within it an equity stake and handing them the responsibility for making big deals and incentivising talent.
ITV's channel portfolio has done a good job of delivering brand presence and making effective use of archive content. But I am not sure how making any of it a pay-TV proposition adds up. No business will emerge from this recession rapidly.
But with viewing figures of almost 20 million for the final of Britain's Got Talent, ITV has demonstrated that it has something special and rare - a mass audience. In the medium term, this will be seen as a more valuable asset than it is now.
Simon Willis
Head of programming, GroupM
The key is to concentrate on great programming. Over the past few years, audience expectation has risen dramatically, thanks to imports such as 24 and Sex and the City or home-grown productions such as Dr Who and The X Factor.
Every programme has to encapsulate an eye-catching idea - wallpaper TV is not good enough. New ideas don't have to be expensive, they just have to be good. Getting there is the problem, but, forgive the cliché, ITV needs to think outside the box. Most of the UK's programming is supplied by a community of large, independent companies that, by and large, deliver derivative formats or variations on a theme.
The source of genuinely new creative ideas can be found outside that. ITV needs to tap the ideas of smaller production companies, partner them with experienced programme-makers and work out innovative co-production arrangements to ensure both parties benefit.
ITV's role should be to create partnerships between people and get innovative programming off the ground. Specialist digital producers should be encouraged to join this process, because they understand the online and cross-platform strategies that will help connect ITV to its audience in ways programme-makers do not.
The fact product placement doesn't exist is a farce. ITV and the other commercial broadcasters should continue to lobby the Government to change its misplaced view that the audience is unable to understand when it is being sold to.
There are huge opportunities within ITV to develop new relationships with brands beyond the 30-second spot. Brands are keen to get involved in content, but the structure and attitude of the broadcaster must be right. ITV is the most open of all the broadcasters to these conversations.
But its online asset ITV.com needs to have a more focused USP. It needs a service or a piece of unique entertainment, a reason for people to make it part of their lives. Again, digital agencies may provide the answer. It's their job to find new technology and exploit it with a creative skin.
Mark Oliver
Chief executive, Oliver & Ohlbaum
The present management has had very little room for manoeuvre, due to the complete lack of strategic direction under previous regimes.
Over the past decade, ITV has had a misguided pay-TV strategy in the form of ONdigital and a late entry into multichannel TV.
It has also mismanaged the exploitation of premium-rate phone lines, missed opportunities in global production and pursued an ill-advised internet acquisition strategy buying Friends Reunited. Not forgetting the disastrous regulatory settlement ITV brought on itself in the form of CRR.
Looking forward, ITV needs to decide on the future of its content division, ITV Studios. Would it achieve greater scale and more focus as part of a larger independent production company or a US studio? A sale doesn't make sense in the current economic climate, but a merger might.
Secondly, ITV needs to take a lead in developing new advertising models. For spot ads, that means developing a new way of trading post-CRR, but there is considerable work to be done developing models around new internet advertising.
Delivery of content via internet-connected platforms such as Sky, Freeview or Canvas raises the prospect of ads being controlled and inserted by a platform, rather than a channel. At the other extreme, production companies could cut their own ad deals.
ITV risks being cut out of the supply chain with advertisers. While ITV can afford to follow the BBC and Sky in terms of the technology for video-on-demand, it cannot afford to follow anybody in terms of raising revenue from those audiences with advertisers.
Thirdly, ITV needs to sort out its portfolio of channels to increase its market share versus Channel 4 and Five. It must decide what share of the free-to-air market is feasible.
Five is vulnerable and a ruthless new chief executive could deliver the killer blow with a combination of ITV1 and ITV2, leaving ITV3 and ITV4 to help with valuable demographics or as the basis for a new pay-TV channel portfolio.
Simon Shaps
Chairman, A Brand Apart Television and former ITV director of television
I'm not convinced ITV needs a new strategy, but I'm certain it needs to deliver the promises it makes. The goals set under Grade's tenure were the right ones; the issue has been achieving them.
Despite persistent arguments that ITV should divest itself of its production arm, ITV Studios, ITV is still best served as a vertically integrated business. In the creative industries, creative success will unlock the door to a sustainable commercial future.
Just like a publishing or record company, the goal must be to have more global hits and, in the process, turn ITV Studios into a world-beating creative company.
This can be accomplished by hiring the best people internally across all genres and organising them to maximise creativity, driven by inspirational leadership.
ITV must also have strong relationships with external talent. That's simple to understand - although achieving it is admittedly complex - but you don't have to deliver 30% or 50% or 70% of the network schedule, providing you find a revenue stream of value.
ITV needs to own more of its shows and the only way to fix that is creative development. Warner Bros and Endemol are hugely successful content creators, without the benefit of a broadcast distribution arm. The fact that ITV is vertically integrated in this way should make life easier.
Ultimately, a new chief executive will have to wrestle with what follows contract rights renewal and whether there's a pay strategy that works for a channel or online assets.
The question is how much growth there is in the existing free-to-air structure and whether some or all of ITV's channels would generate more revenue as pay-TV.
The world is moving from one of free, ad-supported channels to a pay-TV model where the key relationship for content owners is with individual customers.
Understanding that one-to-one relationship must be central to any strategy.
Carolyn Fairbairn
Group strategy director, ITV
It is no surprise to see a compelling agenda for ITV's next chief executive from Media Week's august panellists - we'd expect no less. It's also a familiar agenda: we are a long way down the road with many of these ideas.
The UK media sector is facing multiple challenges - not least a global economic recession and an accelerating technological revolution. ITV is responding positively and confidently to the changing environment, building on our core strengths, not abandoning them.
ITV has already scored a number of programme successes this year - from Lewis and Whitechapel to Britain's Got Talent - and there will be more.
Our broadcast business is increasing its audience share for the first time in 27 years. Our digital channels, already the most successful family of channels in the UK, are bucking market trends and continuing to grow and we are diversifying to take advantage of new opportunities and technologies.
We are also doing the right things online. In May, we delivered 50 million fully revenue-generating video views - our best monthly performance to date. Viewers have shown their appetite for catch-up content on the ITV Player and Canvas - our proposal for a free-to-air television service powered by the internet - will enable new opportunities for advertisers.
Underpinning ITV's business model is its role as a content producer. This gives ITV the opportunity to raise revenue from its content on new platforms and sell programmes beyond the UK.
High-margin formats such as I'm A Celebrity, Hell's Kitchen and Come Dine With Me lead the way internationally. We have also partnered with powerhouses such as 19 and Shine to develop new formats for all territories.
We are always looking at new ways to strengthen our business. ITV is embracing the opportunities the digital world presents and focusing on what we do best - investing in content and delivering it to our viewers wherever they wish to view it. Commercial TV is not an industry in its death throes - it is an industry in transition.