Some form of classical would be best, in my opinion. I think G-90 or 75 is a viable alternative to the slower games with a forty move time and then SD.

If tournament playing times became too fast I think it would definitely turn away older, and old, players, as someone earlier said, a lot of the established base.

As far as quality goes, I've noticed that whenever an IM or GM DVD goes into an interesting but flawed game there's always a remark about how they players may have been in time pressure, or it might have been a blitz game. I enjoy fast games as much as anyone else, but in a rated tournament I'd opt for a slow control where there's time to calculate and form plans without worrying too much about the clock.

I mean if player x beats player y say 16 - 8 in 24 Blitz games that gives much more indication of their relative  chess strength than a single 1-0 or .5-.5 in a slowplay game.

It occurs to me that say in 5 hours a series of blitz  games  would give a much truer result as to who is thestrongest than  One slowplay game.

The Botvinnik Memorial was a double round robin rapid tournament featuring all of the top four players in the world.

Guess what, nobody here even mentioned it. The players didn't take it seriously and there was scant  coverage of the games.

Meanwhile, the World Cup is going on, and it's being followed much more closely. Yes, the way the organizers are handling the media aspects are noteworthy, but that doesn't have to do with the time control.

With the possible exception of blitz/bullet, I don't see how a faster time control will make cheating any more difficult than classical time controls.

I certainly don't see that blitz/bullet chess would be a popular spectator sport. It requires quite a high level of chess acumen to follow a blitz or bullet game, and there's no time for commentary in such a fast game.

I think that people who want chess to become a more spectator-friendly game either don't understand chess or don't understand spectators.

I don't think you'll find any sponsors in the arabian, chinese or indian world ... all the players from these countries rely on income from western countries ...
they wouldn't be able to make a living in their own countries ...

anyway it's not about professional sport, I think exotic sports like ski jumping or biathlon, which can only be done in ski resorts is also not available to most of the people, still they are watched by a lot of people ...
chess is *not* a spectatorsport ... you think anyone wants to see a 5 hour game on t.v.? ... it's about making the sport appealing to the masses, it's not about following traditions for the sake of following the tradition ... everything has to be reevaluated ... imho. if everything stays like it is, chess as a sport will disappear, I don't see to many youthful people in the western world wanting to play chess, you think youths find it attractive to spend like a whole week only playing 5 hour games, you should really reevaluate this ... take a look at popular internet multiplayer games like starcraft 2 or league of legends, an average game lasts like 20 minutes to 40 minutes ... there is a reason noone wants to play games lasting 5 hours ...

adapt or go extinct, it's on you to make the right decision

A new time control won't have a positive effect on the number of players. Just about every player I've ever seen learned the game without clocks. A different time control won't bring these players back to chess, but it may lose some of the established base of fans we already have.

Money is all that counts.

Look at poker, the game itself without money is rather boring and just heats up with money.
Look at golf, the game is even slower than chess, but with money it suddenly attracts the public.
Another example is women-football in germany, nobody, except of women's representatives and some older men wanted to watch three weeks of this bad pass festival called women football on tv, but lots of money was in the background to overdose the public and the "always-correct-media" and suddenly all tvs ran and alleged 15 million people were interested and watched games like germany v whatever.
The consumers want entertainment, dramas, action etc., chess has everything, but no lobby.
All-in counter-argument: chess is too complicated and too slowly for television.
No!
--> 10 millions budget for a match like Anand - Carlsen; number has to be mentioned every hour; just two players, that viewers get to know them;
--> presentation like on the chessbase server with 
commentatores like King, Seirawan, Gustafsson etc to entertain and help the viewers, what´s going on
--> permanent computer evaluation, hotness-O-meter and mate-O-meter {Fritz12 gimmicks} on the screen, first the viewers are confused, later they are pround to explain it other viewers to feel somewhat clever;
--> hourly new guests, who aren´t familiar with chess, but say: "so exciting", "I love Magnus", "Anand is a genius, but Magnus is cute"
--> sidestories, sidestories, scandals chess has everything and more
Suddenly chess arrives the evening news and gets even more viewers, sponsores and so on.

We just need the very first big sponsor, the very first step on tv, the rest is marketing. In the western world there is obviously no such big sponsor, so our hope belongs to enthusiasts from china, india, maybe arabian world.