“The price increase has merely compensated for other drags . . . as their energy hedges expire and wage demands increase,” said James Barford, analyst at the media consultancy Enders Analysis. He pointed to BT’s modest target for 2022 of 4 per cent growth in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation.

“At a certain level of money, it is control that matters the most,” says Claire Enders, founder of Enders Analysis and a longtime Murdoch watcher. “What this transition is about is future control and restoration of the original structure of News Corp and a long-term umbrella for the newspaper assets.”

Britain’s most respected media analyst, Claire Enders, has backed Rupert Murdoch’s proposal to merge Fox Corporation and News Corporation, labelling the potential deal “tremendous” and said it signalled that he had emerged from hibernation.

Enders, the founder of Enders Analysis who has worked in and analysed the media and telecommunications’ sectors for the past four decades, met News Corporation chief executive Robert Thomson and News UK chief executive Rebekah Brooks on Monday to discuss the deal.

Julian Aquilina, senior TV analyst at Enders Analysis, suggests that each streaming service "must have content that makes them stand out" in order to survive.

"There's been fierce competition between platforms to get their hands on the best pieces of content; the last few years have been a golden age for scripted content," he says.

He added "Clearly Netflix, Disney, and others believe that offering people the option of a cheaper service with adverts opens up some headroom for growth."

Karen Egan, an analyst at Enders Analysis, said that the ECJ ruling next year is “going to be absolutely critical for European mergers”, adding that regulators’ view on the Orange-MasMovil deal is “more uncertain than the companies are portraying to the market."

She added “Whether you’ve got three players desperately trying to fill their networks, or four, isn’t that different in terms of competitive intensity."

Gill said "BBC Studios is certainly a very powerful engine that brings money back to the parent company, but it is not a cash cow. Even if its growth has been constant, in production, the profit margins are quite low."

Francois said “Private equity funds, like KKR, seem to have discovered in recent years the value of intellectual property and the relatively predictable income it generates."

The quality of its editorial policy has a lot to do with it. “They have a great flair for investing in blockbuster films. The Mission impossible, for example, will still make money in fifteen years”, notes François Godard. The tremendous success of "Top Gun: Maverick", which at the end of August had accumulated more than 1.4 billion dollars in worldwide box office receipts, provides a recent illustration of this.

Douglas said “Young people worry about a consensus in the news hierarchy and the combative tone of news media. The News Movement cuts through these issues. As a result of the rapid rise in subscriptions, news and media have become investible again. It is great to see a cycle of innovation gathering pace.”