ABC, NBC and Fox all drawing around a million viewers less each night than they did last season. CBS is the one network that has improved from last season, up 1% in viewership.

Among the 18-to-49-year-old audience sought by advertisers, there are also declines. Both ABC and Fox are down 14%, while NBC is down 9% and CBS is down 3%.

Yet advertisers are still plowing money into broadcast television; in other word, companies still need to advertise as part of their ability to sell. The solution is to choose the platform that is most effective while reaching the largest audience...TV.

Companies simply cannot stop advertising and the platforms these ads run on simply cannot charge the same prices as during boon periods. Customers are still wooed by advertising so the triumvirate cannot survive without each other.

So what do most companies do during tough times? Stop advertising. Stop recruiting. Layoff recruiters and other employees. Crawl into shell. Wait for the tide to come in again.

Here's what happens during and after layoffs - some employees respond positively after finally being given the opportunity to shine, fear and entrenchment sets in for most. For the majority, effectiveness declines and leadership wonders why performance suffers after implementing effectiveness initiatives.

In reality, these periods call for a further culling of the herd and replacing them with more skilled people. In other words, continued recruiting. This means continuous advertising, relationship building, and hiring. Leadership spends so much more time on strategic posturing and new visioning and is afraid to be tactical. Many talk big and stand in line for government handouts.

It's all backwards.