Ever since Adam Crozier and his chairman Archie Norman arrived at ITV, they have been keen to send out the message that it will take five years to turn it around.
Crozier says the problems go far beyond the recent advertising recession and go back 10 years: "The internet advertising business has gone from zero to £3 billion a year. The pay-TV business has gone to £6 billion. We have a zero per cent share of that market and clearly that is not a good place to be."
So has Crozier got the cure? Moving ITV from being chiefly advertising-funded to "freemium" — a mixture of free and pay — looks sensible.
Starting to charge for ITV2, ITV3 and ITV4 in high definition is hardly bold yet if it works, Crozier could move much further.
Potentially more interesting, he wants to develop "micropayments" on ITV.com. Surely a lot of viewers would pay £1 to see an episode of Coronation Street in advance.
Flagship ITV1 will stay free. No wonder when it aired all 321 of the most-watched programmes on UK commercial TV in the first six months of this year.
ITV still offers advertisers huge scale in a way no other commercial broadcaster can match.
But it is very tricky getting the balance right between free and pay. And the creative types won't be happy that the annual programming budget has been capped at £800 million.
Crozier faces a long haul.
