Exposed to the consumer? Yes, in every possible way. Leveraged, or highly geared, yes, that applies to many media companies as well, especially a company such as Mecom, of course, which is financed by debts and has suffered a terrible beating on the stock market recently. Besides, how strategical are its investors, and how patient if the advertisement slump drags on? However, the European markets it operates in aren’t necessarily as badly hit by the downturn as the UK is, but this - that many of the companies on my beat operate in several markets - is why I’ve been watching and waiting for the ghost of recession to spread through Europe, and I have to admit I expected to see it effect advertisement spend and financial results much sooner.

Still, Nils Pratley wrote in The Guardian recently: “Buy when there is blood on the streets, advised Sir John Templeton, the celebrated investor and philanthropist... It is excellent advice, as Templeton proved time and again, and a few market shrewdies are asking whether current conditions are sufficiently bloody to be tempting.”

Not all media companies are equally immune to raiders: in desperate times such as these ownership structures could shift – both through raids and consolidation - as could the advertisers’ favour. The Guardian recently quoted Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of the advertising group WPP, saying: "The pressure on the newspaper industry in western European markets is both structural, because of disintermediation by the web, and cyclical because of slowing growth rates. The cyclical part will return, the structural one will not. The simple fact is that more people are reading newspapers or newspaper content online, rather than offline."

This reminded me of an interview I did with Norwegian media researcher Arne Krumsvik a while back, where he speculated that should we see a serious advertisement slump in Norway, it might be the death knell for the print editions of tabloids like VG and Dagbladet, the famous last straw that finally made advertisers seek shelter online (already the online profits of these papers much surpass their print profits).  Against this backdrop, this line from Peter Preston’s column, is, well, richly imbued with meanings: “This is a voyage of discovery, not simple despair: and we shall all understand the future rather better when it's over.” Mercifully, bear markets tend not to last very long, as one media analyst I talked to recently was keen to emphasis, but there are of course those, who, given the volatility of the market, would put more faith in the words of say Jonathan Cainer…