Tip for corporate website designers: don’t put pictures of the “board of directors” under a sign saying “Emmerdale — please drive carefully through our village”. Even if the company is ITV, the show’s broadcaster.

What sort of impression does that give? That the entire 12-strong board, down from chairman Andrew Cosslett and chief executive Dame Carolyn McCall, are a sleepy, safety-first bunch that don’t like to be disturbed? Or that somewhere in their ranks there may even lurk a village idiot? Or that this is the sort of company where the world could easily pass them by?

Seriously, no one needs that sort of visual clue — and not least if the company actually is ITV. A squint at the ten-year share price chart does the trick for most people — because, whatever the board’s efforts, it doesn’t make pretty viewing.

That much has just been driven home by the group’s biggest investor — Liberty Global — offloading half its 10 per cent stake to raise £135 million at a cut-price 69¾p. To get shot of it it had to sell at a 6 per cent discount to Tuesday’s close: enough to send the shares down 8.5 per cent to 68p. Worse, the sale was at a fraction of the 185p at which Liberty bought into ITV in 2014. So, just the thing to underline how much the group has atrophied in this Netflix and YouTube age.

True, at one level, the sale may say more about Liberty Global than ITV. Earlier this year its chairman, 84-year-old John Malone, told investors it would raise $500 million to $750 million via asset sales. And, small mercies, it has kept half its ITV stake, rather than flogging the lot. But there is a clear read-across.

Malone, once touted as a bidder for ITV, is far too canny to be selling down if it was on the brink of some value-accretive corporate action. So all bets must be off for now on any deal, including those rumoured talks with Redbird IMI’s All3Media and European production house Banijay about some sort of tie-up with ITV’s prized studios wing — the one that delivers about half the sales and profits but, on some analyst estimates, is worth more than ITV’s entire £2.56 billion market cap.

And, without a deal, how can ITV unlock that value? McCall, who took charge in January 2018, is well aware of the problem — as you’d expect from a boss so far paid a total of £22 million. Her operational strategy broadly stacks up too. She spotted that, even if the linear broadcasting wing is profitable and can pull in five million-plus viewers for the likes of I’m a Celebrity and Love Island, the market doesn’t rate it because it’s exposed to the ups and downs of the ad market.

So, she launched the ITVX streaming service, which previous management was far too slow to get off the ground, while building up Studios: home to hits including Mr Bates vs The Post Office and Rivals for Disney. At July’s half-year, these more reliable digital and production revenues made up 63 per cent of the total £1.85 billion sales. She’s also returned £1.4 billion to investors via dividends and buybacks.

Yet, pointing at those figures isn’t enough — whatever the view of JP Morgan Cazenove analysts that ITV should be trading on “13 times” forecast earnings per share, a multiple that would imply a 108p share price. Like a lot of TV, this is a story that needs action: an event that makes the value in this business unmissable. Of course, the board isn’t sitting on its hands. But investors deserve a fair bit more speed from the village people.

Castles in the air

What price connectivity? As Heathrow keeps telling us, it’s already “the best-connected airport in the world”. Indeed, as it noted at its nine-month update, “regions and nations across the UK now have direct access to 92 per cent of the global economy”. So, quick question: is it worth spending £49 billion on a third runway to reach the other 8 per cent?

Sure, an extra landing strip would bring higher frequencies and more competition on individual routes, which would be in consumers’ interests. But is that at any price? As the latest figures underline, there’s no way Heathrow can afford to fund this new runway under the present regulations. It’s already got gearing of more than 81 per cent — net debt of £17.2 billion against a regulatory asset base of £21.1 billion.

How does an indebted business like that pay such an insane sum for a new runway without jacking up landing charges at what is already the world’s most expensive airport? And that’s before the other joys that go with this project, such as the guaranteed gridlock from putting all 12 lanes of the M25 in a tunnel and demolishing 752 homes — or maybe more, in the view of the locals.

Anyway, all this is a bit of context for the latest from transport secretary Heidi Alexander, who is fast-tracking a review of the Airports National Policy Statement in “18 months”, so the government can make a decision on the third runway this parliament. Yes, she had caveats over noise, air quality, net-zero obligations and the project’s contribution to economic growth.

But a big one is affordability. The Civil Aviation Authority is working on some new regulatory formula. But it’s not obvious what magic it can come up with that suddenly makes a £49 billion runway scheme affordable for both Heathrow and its airline passengers. This project looks a long way from take-off.

Cutting edge dulled

Inflation flat at a better-than-expected 3.8 per cent. So no surprise: up goes the FTSE 100 on hopes that the Bank of England now has more of a reason to cut rates. Still, haven’t Andrew Bailey and co been warning lately that, in these soaraway equity markets, “the risk of a sharp market correction has increased” with a potential hit to financial stability? Hard to see how a rates cut will help.