At what point will the slow train wreck that is Ten Network reach its inevitable conclusion?

Its audience has decamped, the advertisers have walked, earnings continue to slide and minority shareholders have turned the stock into a speculative punt on failure. All that is missing is another upheaval in the upper ranks.

The flashpoint could well be sooner than many anticipate, and the kingmaker in any ownership change will be Bruce Gordon, the reclusive Wollongong-based billionaire owner of WIN TV.

Lachlan Murdoch and James Packer led the charge into Ten back in 2010, both emerging with 9 per cent of the troubled group before launching a coup and securing control of the board in 2011.

It will be Murdoch who undoubtedly will trigger the next chapter in Ten's turbulent future.

Ever since Lachlan Murdoch returned to the News Corp fold last month – stepping up as co-chairman with his father Rupert – rumour and speculation has surrounded the future of his personal holding in Ten.

While the official line from Ten is that its former chairman plans to hang on to his 9 per cent stake, the list of potential scenarios include the media scion offloading his stake to News if cross media ownership laws are relaxed, orchestrating a takeover, or simply selling to any willing buyer.

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Ultimately, that raises questions about two of the other three billionaires on the register, James Packer and Gina Rinehart. Neither would be likely to hang around if Murdoch sells.

Packer quit his seat on the Ten board just months after joining in 2011, ostensibly over a senior management appointment, but has retained his stake.

Any decision by Murdoch to offload can be guaranteed to be taken only after consultation with Packer, whose time these days is consumed by his burgeoning casino empire.

Given the pair bought their 18 per cent stake together, they are likely to exit in the same fashion.

Gina Rinehart also bought a 10 per cent interest in 2010, reportedly on the suggestion of Packer. She too has her hands full with the recent financing of the Roy Hill iron ore project and has gained little kudos from her media investment.

All three moguls are nursing serious losses on Ten with the share price plunging from levels of around $1.50 when they bought to this week's 26c lows, although their entry price has been lowered by successive capital raisings.

That just leaves one mogul of interest - WIN TV owner Bruce Gordon, whose regional television network is Australia's biggest with 23 stations.

The billionaire Gordon, who divides his time between Wollongong and Bermuda, has long harboured a desire to control a national free to air television network.

He quietly was in the market for the Nine Network – back in the late 1980s when Alan Bond was foundering and again three years ago when private equity group CVC Asia Pacific was suffocating on its own debt - and he made little secret that he was open to a merger between WIN and Nine before Nine's stock market listing last year.

Given Gordon is Ten's single biggest shareholder with a 15 per cent stake and has been there for years, a merger between WIN and Ten could be on the cards if the expected changes in media ownership laws come to fruition.