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Douglas said “The Sun is a challenged business and the company doesn’t yet have its arms around what to do with it strategically. The brand’s confidence has been hit for sure, but it remains relevant and there are always opportunities: what might it merge with or acquire? The Sun can be a huge network play."

He added “News UK is building an overall scale platform; ‘We aren’t just newspapers, we are a conglomerate’. You need to innovate to fly and you can’t criticise them for experimenting and looking at different models. News Corporation has always had a swagger, an extraordinary confidence, but in recent times I’m not sure News UK has quite had it. This is about getting that swagger back.”

Douglas said they will need to do further restructuring involving axing titles and layoffs. Iwan Le Moine of emge, a British paper-industry consultancy, expects a big increase in 2022 of the number of papers that shut compared with a typical year. That will lower demand and nudge the market back towards equilibrium.But newspapers will have more hard conversations about paper, full stop.

Karen said “I think some investors have become confused with the alt-nets. They are thinking ‘big investment and secure returns. So far, they have only seen big investments and forgotten about the returns."

“The overbuild issue [from Openreach and Virgin Media O2] is something the [alt-nets] would like to skirt over."

Douglas said “It’s all about the market business now."

Douglas said “One of the effects of the pandemic is that it’s accelerated structural change that’s been going on for some time. The transition from physical retail to online retail, the transition of offline media to online media... all of those structural changes were rapidly accelerated. In actual fact, about five years of change – from the perspective of business planning – was probably in effect executed overnight due to the pandemic."

He added “I think that had an upside effect. I think it gave some people confidence in the fundamentals of media businesses in a way that they were still worried about them at the end of 2019 and early 2020. Which is to say that the transition was expected to take a long time, and it was to be very expensive."

Tom said “If you’re a new service and you’re not spending as much on content as Netflix, you can’t feasibly argue to the consumer that you’re offering something better. You certainly can’t offer more, so you have to undercut them.” He added: “It’s an artificial price environment that can’t last for ever — and not everyone will win.”

Tom said “content on screen doesn't directly translate to real-world harm” and the leaking of Chappelle’s deal – $24 million for one stand-up special. “Netflix is no longer a disruptor – they’re an established multinational,” he argues. “They may have scaled up everything but they’re still reacting like a start-up sending round memos not realising they’ll be leaked. Warner and Disney wouldn’t send that kind of memo and five years ago this sort of content wouldn’t have been as big a deal.”

Part of the staff fury is down to the way Netflix runs a more open, start-up style internal culture that it describes as “radical transparency.” It is acceptable practice to be brutally honest when offering feedback to co-workers as long as “you only say things about fellow employees that you say to their face.”