A year of scandal and upheaval at the BBC ended with the public broadcaster being rudderless and facing a $10bn (£7.4bn) lawsuit from Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, the once-derided GB News declared itself "Britain's number one news channel".
Whoever accepts the challenge of becoming the next BBC director-general after Tim Davie's shock resignation faces a "battle for relevance", insiders fear.
Viewers are cancelling their licence fees in droves and fleeing to streaming rivals and YouTube for entertainment, sport and news.
As a result, BBC staffers are asking if it is bad luck or bad management that left the BBC reeling from a series controversies surrounding the behaviour of its leading talent.
Gregg Wallace was terminated from MasterChef in July after 45 allegations of bad behaviour were upheld against him. He took co-host John Torode down with him over an upheld complaint of racist language.
The BBC's biggest hit Strictly Come Dancing is listing after the arrest of two star names on suspicion of rape and the unexpected departure of presenters Claudia Winkleman and Tess Daly.
After years of rows over his political views, Gary Lineker was finally levered to the exit after sharing an antisemitic image of a rat.
A surprise return to social media from Huw Edwards in December revived painful memories of the scandal that took down the BBC's then highest-paid journalist.
But it was serious failings in the news department that infuriated government ministers and unleashed calls for the licence fee to be abolished.
The documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, which failed to inform viewers that the child narrator was the son of a Hamas official, was "materially misleading", Ofcom found.
In a stinging ruling, the watchdog added that the documentary "had the potential to erode the significantly high levels of trust that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war". The BBC said the film, which was pulled from iPlayer, should not have been signed off, and it was taking appropriate action on accountability. But the scandal was a prelude of more difficulties to come.
"Tim and Deborah [Turness, News chief executive] never got to grips with the complaints over impartiality and Israel-Gaza," a BBC News staffer said. "There were problems with BBC Arabic contributors who had made blatantly antisemitic remarks, but the internal culture wasn't tackled."
"Tim gave the impression that this was such a vexed issue that if the BBC was getting complaints from all sides then it must be doing something right. But people expect higher standards of impartiality at the BBC."
Davie first considered resigning after the BBC broadcast an antisemitic rant live at Glastonbury from Bob Vylan - the politicised duo that was already on a "high-risk" list - which angered Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy.
The eventual trigger for his resignation was the leaked discovery of misleading editing of an edition of Panorama. It gave the impression that Trump had directly incited violence at the Capitol in 2021. The revelation led to months of internal bickering over the sequence.
BBC news bosses had defended the editing in front of the BBC board, suggesting it was standard practice to splice sections of a long speech together.
The news insider said: "Tim would probably have gone anyway after the charter negotiations with the government in 2026. When Deborah told him she felt she didn't have the confidence of the board and would quit, he decided to go too."
The insider added: "It had been a bruising five years and as DG he probably felt a responsibility to Deborah, who people believe had been lured from ITN on the understanding that Tim would back his successor, the first female DG. With both quitting, the BBC has no succession plan right at the top."
The candidates to replace Davie as director-general, who include Jane Turton, chief executive of TV production leader All3Media, and Jay Hunt, the Apple executive who brought Slow Horses to the screen, may be left with the task of deciding whether to fight Trump's lawsuit over Panorama or spend licence fee income on an expensive settlement.
It was a bitter irony that coverage of the BBC resignations may have boosted ratings for GB News, the right-wing rival that has never tied itself in knots over interpretations of impartiality.
The opinion-led station, derided for its "zero" ratings in the period after its 2021 launch, highlighted official figures that reveal it has outperformed Sky News for a majority of 2025. Channel bosses claim it is "on track" to beat BBC News next year.
BARB ratings confirmed that the "People's Channel" attracted higher average viewing than Sky News from breakfast through to evening prime-time and beat BBC News on significant events such as Budget Day.
In another boost, the White House has embraced GB News after it began late night UK broadcasts from a bureau in Washington, DC. Trump gave the channel's Bev Turner an exclusive interview, inviting her to travel with him on Air Force One.
A GB News insider said: "Major crimes, BBC rows, Trump, small boats and culture wars are all fuelling ratings. We now have ten million social media followers. Viewers are tired of the metropolitan elitist perspective of the traditional broadcasters.
"But make no mistake, people who work at GB see the channel as a political cause - 2026 is going to be a big year. It's about really influencing the public debate as much as ratings and making money."
BBC executives point to figures showing that despite the recent crises, trust in BBC News actually increased in 2024-5.
GB News might be winning the multichannel news war but its numbers are dwarfed by the millions who tune in across the UK for the 6.30pm regional BBC news bulletin.
BBC content on TV, radio, online and iPlayer is still seen by 94 per cent of UK adults every month, boosted by hits like the Gavin & Stacey Christmas finale, seen by 19 million viewers, and The Celebrity Traitors.
Yet as ministers have warned, a compulsory licence fee is becoming unsustainable. The number of households paying the annual fee of £174.50 is in steady decline, down from 25.2 million in 2020 to 23.8 million people this year.
YouTube is now the second most popular UK viewing destination, moving ahead of ITV and closing in fast on the BBC, Ofcom research has found.
Radical reform of the licence fee and governance of the BBC is promised in the charter review negotiations, in order to future proof a "sustainable" BBC at a time of disruption and rapid technological change.
ITV has attracted a takeover bid from Comcast, the US giant which owns Sky, hoping to create a commercial advertising and streaming powerhouse.
Channel 4, in danger of being squeezed, has poached its new chief executive, Priya Dogra, from Sky, where she was in charge of advertising, data and revenue.
Netflix's bid to buy Warner Brothers Discovery would see the streamer strengthen its grip over the subscription business by adding a catalogue of classic film and TV shows to its library.
The BBC's job advertisement for a new director-general says it is seeking a resilient, "commercially-minded" leader, with a track record of making "complex and challenging editorial judgements", to step into this media whirlwind and guide the organisation through the most perilous period in its history.
They will be given a deputy DG with an editorial remit to spot any disasters on the horizon amid concerns that the job is now too big for one person.
The new boss will take over negotiations for a new BBC charter with the Culture Secretary, whose Green Paper contains radical proposals unpalatable to bosses, including placing the most popular BBC hits behind a subscription paywall, with a reduced licence fee only paying for news, current affairs and children's TV.
It's a prestigious role, but one many senior TV figures say they do not envy.