Whether it’s media heavyweights weighing in on the future or developments below the radar, we are inundated with images of an industry working through dramatic change that will carry it through challenging times.

Yahoo needs a visionary, proactive CEO who can re-channel its energy and resources, make innovation the gold standard and constructively respond to challenges with an epic sense of digital possibilities. Does this white knight exist?

After two years as AOL’s chief executive following several decades at the top of NBC, Randy Falco’s primary charge continues to be monetizing traffic. Despite media’s massive digital convergence, the rules of playing on Madison Avenue have not changed-even in a global recession, he says.

Venture capital, as distressed as other financing vehicles these days, could be a critical link to sustaining recession-time research and development.

An upside to the downside of this brutal recession will be the widespread rejection of broken old business models and the development of new structures fit for the digital age.

Media and electronics executives, whose balance sheets rely on collapsing consumer and advertiser spending, can hardly be blamed for lining up behind the big three automakers screaming “Tarp Me!” Perhaps key companies can prove to the Feds that they are too big to fail, thereby earning a bailout.

With broadcast network companies such as NBCU, News Corp. and CBS increasingly relying on online sites and digital platforms for distribution, local station owners fear broadcast network owners will exit the TV station business and sell shows directly to cable and new digital media.

The Feds won’t bail the media industry out. Valuations are evaporating and revenue losses are mounting. Companies must seize control of their own destinies. Here are five ways to create your own safety net.

Last week’s grim warnings from advertising and consumer-dependent Big Media notably culminated with Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger conceding that this economic downturn and ad falloff have been faster than any he has witnessed in 30 years. It has spread like wildfire to every media platform. What can stop it?

Big media executives concede that the ad bottom is falling out of their Teflon earnings proclamations earlier this year. The best will develop enterprising new business ventures to survive. A deep, protracted recession is one thing; a permanent digital shift in industry economics is another.