Blind panic seems to rule the day and you’d be a fool to think the stock market might not yet go lower still. Certainly it is possible there will be a Japanese deflation, with short and long term interest rates falling close to zero, and asset prices in seemingly permanent decline. But it still doesn’t seem likely.If you believe the deflationary story, you should lock up your cash in an HSBC deposit account, where you would be lucky to get 3.5 per cent gross. Alternatively, you could buy the shares, which yield a pretty much bullet proof 5.2 per cent net and represent one of the most balanced bets possible on the world eventually returning to growth.BBC/BSkyBGreg Dyke, director general of the BBC, leant over backwards yesterday to insist that his decision to ditch BSkyB as the BBC’s satellite distribution channel did not mark any great schism, row or confrontation with the pay-TV broadcaster.

Likewise, Sky’s Tony Ball was putting as brave a face on it as he could, and certainly Auntie’s decision was hardly a bolt out of the blue to him, as the contract was coming up for renewal. Even so, there’s no doubt that this is pretty bad news for Sky, and in the fullness of time it might come to be seen as the end of the cosy relationship that Mr Dyke has enjoyed with BSkyB since he became director general.The monetary cost alone of losing the BBC contract is £85m over five years, and if other free to air broadcasters follow suit, as seems quite likely, then the eventual cost to profits might be upwards of £30m a year. These are not trivial sums, but they won’t in themselves break the bank. The more serious threat to Sky is that having had the digital satellite platform exclusively to itself, there’s now someone else trying to muscle in on the action.This isn’t going to be a problem in the pay TV arena, which will remain largely a Sky monopoly, but the more the BBC and others make multi-channel TV free to air, the more it eats into Sky’s potential market for pay-TV and therefore its prospects for growth.

Freeview has surprised everyone with its success, and although Sky is a partner in the venture, it cannot be entirely happy with the way things are going. An enfeebled ITV Digital was undoubtedly preferable to the fast growing Freeview, which for growing numbers of people satisfies their appetite for multi-channel TV but without having to pay for it That’s a market Sky once had to itself. Sky also finds its monopoly of premiership rights under attack from the BBC in Brussels.Mr Dyke did not opt for unencrypted satellite to spite Rupert Murdoch In itself, this is no declaration of war. But it does seem to me that the interests of our two dominant broadcasters are starting to diverge sharply, not withstanding the fact that one is public service and the other is pay. Mr Dyke is a street fighter, and although he runs a public sector Leviathan, he’s competitive and commercial in his his approach to the media. Mr Murdoch needs to start watching his back.Six ContinentsHugh Osmond has been seen off by Six Continents, but he did extraordinarily well to get as far as he did.

His biggest mistake was in leaving his intervention too late. The institutions could hardly have voted against a demerger which they had for so long been demanding, and Mr Osmond’s arrival after last orders had been called was deemed just too impertinent to be given the time of day.Mistake number two was that there was simply not enough cash in the mix of his bid. When a tiny company bids in shares for a much larger one, shareholders would normally require a fully underwritten cash alternative, so as to give some kind of certainty on valuation.Mr Osmond’s insistence that it was simply not possible in these markets with the threat of war overshadowing everything to have a full cash alternative is fair enough as far as it goes. To raise even the £1.4bn he did might seem achievement enough. But there’s a price for everything, and Mr Osmond was not prepared to pay it Other risk taking entrepreneurs have.