“Paramount has devoted most of its scripted content budget to Taylor Sheridan after signing a multi-year deal with him in 2021 and his output has been astonishing,” says Tom Harrington, analyst at Enders Analysis. “His phenomenal speed – nine shows in three years – is at another level when it comes to creating franchises. There are others who have commanded similar control over the output of individual networks, like Law & Order’s Dick Wolf at NBC but he took years to expand his universe. The Sheridanverse feels like it has materialised in months.”

Karen Egan, head of mobile at Enders Analysis, says a refusal to allow consolidation has made investment “very difficult”, particularly for smaller operators.

“It’s a real balancing act between consumer prices and investment and I certainly think that regulators and policymakers in Europe have got that balance wrong of late,” she adds.

“You can have low prices and investment, but not four networks,” says Egan. “You can have four networks that are cheap but not great. Or you can have four networks that are really good quality but not cheap.

“You really can’t have your cake and eat it.”

"When you watch Gladiators, it's exactly the same as it was in the 1990s, in terms of the challenges, the music and the eliminations," Tom Harrington, an analyst at the media research firm Enders Analysis, told the BBC.

Mr Harrington said some other revived shows have failed because they've "been tinkered with" to the point they end up losing what made them good originally.

"With Gladiators, the producers understood what made it great to watch in the first place, and they've not messed with that at all," he added.

Mr Harrington said the Gladiators reboot had achieved a rare feat of getting families to come together on a Saturday night to watch TV.

"It's a declining phenomenon," he said. "Especially when you consider that younger viewers are moving away from TV to short-form video or streaming services.

"But here you have a show that's on at a particular time slot, and people [have tuned] in."

“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.”