It is largely in the eye of the beholder. The primary reason Trump gets the most airtime on every network is because he is generally guaranteed to be the most entertaining.
Cruz hired the best political consultants in the business and they and this contest have honed his image greatly, but he still does not have prime time presentation skills. He is not going to get enough of a mainstream following this time around to pick up a majority of the delegates before the convention. I assume that you and I both understand that the likelihood of the GOPe steering a brokered convention towards Cruz is nonexistent.
Cruz has managed to torpedo himself in the last couple weeks attacking Trump, but he is somehow going to try and stick it out to the convention. The GOPe will try to steer the convention towards him if Trump does not reach the magic number of delegates. That is his only realistic chance of getting the nomination. It is still a long shot.
Cruz hasn’t torpedoed himself. He outperformed all polling by big margins on Super Tuesday.