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“They are more exposed than anyone to the advertising market,” says Tom Harrington, head of TV at the media consultancy Enders Analysis, with commercials providing about two-thirds of Channel 4’s income. Much of the surplus it boasted of having less than two years ago has been spent – including £17 million on staff retention bonuses. “It was clear the market was going to get more difficult,” Harrington adds. “Ironically, now they are letting a lot of those people go.” Among the highly-regarded commissioners to have departed in recent weeks are head of factual Alf Lawrie, Caroline Hollick, the Leeds-based drama chief who brought I Am Ruth and It’s a Sin to the broadcaster, and head of youth and digital, Karl Warner.

“The proxy battle has become an intensely personal issue for Iger, as well as his proxy supporters, specifically to stop Peltz at all costs from claiming a board seat,” said Gareth Sutcliffe of Enders Analysis.

“Disney in many respects is in a much better position than it was when Iger became CEO again,” said Sutcliffe, “but there are longterm risks, including what happens on linear TV networks and [streaming] costs. So there are still things that need to be done to put Disney on the right track.”

“The valuation at this stage is completely detached from business reality,” according to Niamh Burns, analyst at Enders Analysis. “But it’s not really about business—these investors are just betting on Donald Trump.”

Gill Hind, director of television at Enders Analysis, said that the channel sat outside the media ecosystem. “The UK has a great reputation for being completely impartial and GB News has taken that to the limit and beyond,” she said.

This misses one important point. Fierce competition has hammered the market’s economics. UK mobile revenues have fallen by 20 per cent in real terms in less than a decade, says Karen Egan at Enders, while data traffic is 30 times higher. Europe as a whole tells a similar tale. In Italy, the average price of one gigabyte of data fell by 85 per cent between 2019 and 2021, according to data compiled by Statista.

“‘League of Legends’ has been out for years and years, and when you’re trying to move the IP into some other area, it’s very difficult to do. Riot has now come to the conclusion that that is probably not the right fit for that kind of expansion,” said Gareth Sutcliffe, the head analyst covering the games industry for the market research service Enders Analysis. “At a practical level, when we talk about how to try to expand that franchise, it’s very, very expensive — and I think it’s pretty clear that they have to do something to stem the losses that are occurring as a result of that, and bring it back to where they were before they decided to go into this extension.”

“If you look at “League of Legends,’ ‘League of Legends’ isn’t just a core game, right? It’s almost ultra-core, and it is far much more of a dedicated gamer audience than some of the other game IPs that are out there,” Sutcliffe said. “And I think that this is a reflection of where Riot has landed.”