Today's RTS convention in Cambridge kicked off with a session on the future - no surprise, there, as the challenge of technology is your average media executive's pet obsession these days.
Futurologist Alec Howe gave a presentation outlining all those 21st century standards - the rise of China, globalisation, new media, even something called teledildonics ("thrust in Cleveland, penetrate in St Petersburg").
The message was that TV needs to think globally and integrate thinking about the future into its day-to-day life, not outsource it. When session chair Dawn Airey asked delegates whether they thought their company "did the future" well, barely a hand was raised.
TV's bigwigs were then asked what they were doing to shape their companies for the future.
BBC director general Mark Thompson said the corporation was trying to "insource" its thinking about the future, exploiting the knowhow of people from outside traditional broadcasting.
"If you looked at the BBC's executive committee or board 20 years ago, there was nobody who had worked outside BBC. Today two people on the executive board who only worked for BBC," Thompson added.
"Almost everyone there are people who have spent significant amounts of time entirely outside not just the BBC but outside TV and broadcasting. Now when looking for people to work on our cutting edge we are looking globally, way beyond conventional broadcasting to get the right people into the organisation.
"The issue is the sharpening of the curve. The fact that [up] to this time we have got on reasonably well with one set of methodologies doesn't mean you can take it for granted, the level of disruption and change is so great. The problem is the future is very interdisciplinary and we're not good enough at binding changes in technology and consumer behaviour together."
ITV's executive chairman, Michael Grade, said: "Where all technology is leading us to have a much more intimate relationship with the consumer, what we have to do is retrain ourselves, to change the habit of a lifetime in terms of giving the public what we think they want. We need to react more quickly addressing them in an interactive way, being utterly responsive and to be ready to be responsive to consumers."
This was BSkyB chief executive James Murdoch's take: "I'd like to think we do the future well. I think we do the future OK... It's cultural: for us management teams the key thing is about not having anxiety to change and to have a real appetite for it, to make bets that create exposure to emerging waves.
"For example we made a bet that people would consume more bandwidth and would want high definition, and that wave is now driving forward a new broadband business for us... You have to be willing to orient your whole business to those trends, have a bigger appetite for risk, a willingness to fail and an appetite for bringing change."
Channel 4's chief executive, Andy Duncan: "We do a lot, but I don't think we do enough. We are open source, ideas can come from anywhere. The big thing we have to build on is our connection with younger audiences, which if anything have strengthened in recent years."
Finally, Channel Five's chief executive, Jane Lighting, said the company worked with specialist consultants and also exploited the expertise of parent company RTL to shape its thinking about the future.
So a must-try-harder all round, then. But can TV ever catch up with the curve, let alone get ahead of it? Expect plenty more anxiety among middle-aged TV executives about whether they can get the hang of this new world.
