Largely overlooked in the rolling disaster have been the 17,000 small shareholders who have suffered from a compromised governance structure and a heavily conflicted board. The Murdochs' 21st Century Fox has one of the two major and expensive foreign content contracts that have been hurting Ten. Credit:Getty Images While the Murdoch empire is likely to continue to do nicely out of Ten, the Australian Shareholders Association warned that retail shareholders face the prospect of losing all their money if administrators were appointed. ASA CEO Judith Fox wanted independent directors added to the board as a matter of urgency. "Given the substantial conflicts of interest and potential related party transactions at play, ASA believes Ten needs to immediately move to a conventional board with a majority of independent directors," Ms Fox said in a statement on Tuesday.

"For that to happen, Ten needs to quickly add two new independent directors so the independents have a majority and can out-vote all of the conflicted directors if necessary to ensure the interests of minority shareholders are protected and conflicts of interest are appropriately managed." Ten's reality shows including MasterChef are supplied by Endemol Shine, which is half-owned by the Murdochs' 21st Century Fox. Ms Fox believed the board should not rush into administration but instead remain suspended from trading while renegotiating contracts, exploring other funding options and, potentially, benefiting from the government's proposed licence fee cut and ownership regulation changes. The ASA expressed "surprise" that the prospect of administrators was being canvassed when the crucial $200 million CBA loan facility guaranteed by Murdoch, Packer and Gordon was only drawn to $66 million and had six months to run. Purely as a matter of my opinion, the Ten dramatics will add to the industry campaign to have the Senate agree to the government's media ownership changes.

Also as a matter of opinion, it would be a little rich if the end result of the years of troubles on the billionaires' watch result in Ten dropping into the Murdoch family's lap after the crucial three-year period when Lachlan Murdoch was either CEO or chairman. Valuable DNA Ten has been a steady source of income for the Murdoch empire. Lachlan Murdoch owns 7.5 per cent of Ten. Foxtel – controlled and half owned by the Murdochs' News Corporation – owns nearly 14 per cent. But that's only the loss-making equity fingerprints. The more valuable DNA is in the increasingly entwined contracts.

The Murdochs' 21st Century Fox has one of the two major and expensive foreign content contracts that have been hurting Ten. Ten's raft of reality shows – The Biggest Loser, MasterChef, The Bachelor et al – are supplied by Endemol Shine, which is half-owned by Murdochs' Fox. Hamish McLennan, a Murdoch executive and the fourth of the five CEOs since the billionaires took over, oversaw Foxtel buying into Ten and Foxtel's MCN taking over Ten's advertising sales. And then there's the Murdoch-owned Fox Sports which provides most of Ten's sports coverage. (One of the early changes under Lachlan Murdoch in 2011 was to change Ten's digital channel, One, from sports to general programming. That effectively reduced competition for Foxtel's Fox Sports channels.) So while Lachlan Murdoch may have done his equity dough (or could yet swap debt for equity to take greater ownership, the Senate permitting), the Murdoch empire has done and continues to do nicely out of Ten through 21st Century Fox, Endemol Shine, MCN and Fox Sports.

Now there's plenty of speculation about the end game being the collapse of Ten into Foxtel, starting with the merging of Sky News and Ten's newsroom. Biggest loser If it comes to that, it will have been quite a ride downhill. As Glenn Dyer, long-time commentator on media machinations, has observed: "If Ten goes into administration, there is only one buyer - News Corp - but only if the Federal Government's media law changes are passed by parliament, especially the Senate." Dyer says Lachlan Murdoch, Packer and Rinehart paid $430 million for a combined holding that was worth little more than $16 million at Friday's close, the shares down to 16 cents each.

Bruce Gordon was already a shareholder when the trio bought in and continued to double-down as Ten's shares fell, taking his stake to 15 per cent and making him by far the biggest loser. No, not on the TV show, on the Ten share register. All commercial television networks have been facing challenges from new media, but it has taken particularly bad management and poor governance to place Ten in the intensive care unit.