However, Rachel Mueller-Lust, executive vice president for networks at IAG Research, said "they don't feel they need to defensively do it because TV isn't working." She says TV executives simply realize advertisers want "360 degree exposure" across new media.

(To better serve clients like Toyota and Verizon, which were clamoring for such exposure, IAG, which measures the effectiveness of advertising, has introduced an internet practice and is developing a way to measure the effectiveness of mobile ads.)

Even as they begin to offer the bells and whistles of online and mobile platforms to advertisers, networks are increasingly tinkering with ways to keep advertising on TV effective.

ABC is introducing an "advertising-value index," which it says will let advertisers pick the audience metrics most important to them and weight them according to priority.

Fox promised to test two fall dramas with 50 percent less commercial time, hoping consumers will respond to shorter ad breaks.

NBCU is tacking content-oriented segments onto the beginnings and ends of its commercial breaks.

And the Turner cable network is experimenting with "contextual advertising," testing whether the material around an ad makes it more or less effective.

The big ideas don't end there. The most Big-Brotherish development, which Lee Doyle describes as the next holy grail of TV advertising, is something called addressable messaging.

The technology, which is about two years away from viability but is already being tested by Cablevision, lets advertisers research households and target consumers with specific, personally relevant ads. Automakers, for example, could send new-car ads to viewers with car leases about to expire.

In a recent assessment of consumers' changing viewing habits and disdain for commercials, Accenture concluded that TV is still the dominant mass-communication device. It also emphasized that content, not distribution channels, builds viewer loyalty. And that, it said, gives producers and networks the opportunity to create "new ways to interact with consumers and entirely new revenue streams."

In the end, it seems, TV is still king because content is king. That much was clear from the hush that overtook upfront audiences after the sales pitches ended and networks aired clips from their new fall shows.

The focus was on the characters, story lines, and gags from a whole new season of programs. And the networks were the ones pulling the rabbit out of the hat.

That gives them the upper hand in the digital age. For now, anyway.