How many billionaires does it take to rescue a struggling, mid-sized broadcaster like Network Ten?
We still don't know after James Packer, Lachlan Murdoch, Bruce Gordon and Gina Rinehart flushed their combined $1 billion investment in the broadcaster down the toilet on Wednesday with the decision to appoint administrators.
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Network Ten placed into voluntary administration
Broadcaster Ten has gone into voluntary administration one day after it halted trading shares on the ASX. Vision courtesy ABC News
Packer, Murdoch and Rinehart picked up $400 million worth of shares in a mad rush in 2010 alone.
The troika poured more money down the drain with subsequent share sales by the company to fund its increasingly fragile business.
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Bermuda-based billionaire, Gordon, did even worse with his charge up the share register over the prior decade.
He invested more than the other billionaires combined, and - at times - paid more than double per share what they did: Up to $3 a share.
The appointment of administrators on Wednesday to fix up, and potentially sell, the business indicates the shares held by current investors might now be worthless.
But losing money on the Ten Network has become a rite of passage for Aussie billionaires.
The rot began much earlier with Westfield founder, Frank Lowy's decision in the 1990s to diversify out of shopping centres and into media - with a young David Gonski testing out his skills as an investor on Lowy's behalf.
Lowy paid Rupert Murdoch's News Corp $840 million for Ten's east coast network in 1986, and lost most of it before the decade was out. Ten was in receivership by 1990.
Lowy said that owning Ten was "like trying to hold a fish. The tighter we gripped it, the more it slipped out of our hands."
His fellow billionaires could say much the same thing all these decades later.
Owning Ten was "like trying to hold a fish. The tighter we gripped it, the more it slipped out of our hands."
Frank Lowy
But the game is not over yet for Lachlan, Packer and Gordon.
They gave the broadcaster a debt guarantee in 2013 in return for Ian Narev's Commonwealth Bank giving Ten a $200 million loan with no financial covenants.
They guaranteed Ten's financial obligations to Commbank under the loan agreement and if an "event of default" occurs - like Ten not paying its debt - they are on the hook to pay the bank.
The upside, if it can be called that, is that the bank has security over most of Ten's assets and the billionaire troika gets rights to this security once they have met their obligations to Commbank.
They will effectively control Ten, notwithstanding the problems this creates for Murdoch and Gordon if current media ownership laws don't change.
Follow CBD on Twitter. Got a tip? ckruger@fairfaxmedia.com.au