497 days is a long time in politics. An exceedingly long time based on Harold Wilson's time scale. But it is the length of time it has taken for the media industry to lose not one Secretary of State, but two.
James Purnell was parachuted out of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and in to the work and pensions brief to take over from the disgraced Peter Hain on 24 January, 2008.
As it happened, within the time it took Media Week to interview the then secretary of state and subsequently publish the article. Thank you Harold.
But while our timing issue was merely annoying, the current decision to flip Andy Burnham over to health and drop Ben Bradshaw into the media hot seat just ten days before the Digital Britain report is due to be published seems extraordinary. But then, we are living through extraordinary times.
Political pundits suggest if the Prime Minister survives the week, he will most likely survive until Spring next year, by which time a general election must be called. Sadly, many media companies looking to the Digital Britain report to provide a few crumbs of comfort may not be so fortunate in the survival stakes.
When Media Week interviewed communications minister Lord Stephen Carter, who is leading the Digital Britain consultation and will deliver the final report some time around 16 June, it garnered industry opinion on the interim results put out at the time.
Trinity Mirror chief executive Sly Bailey noted "the crushing lack of understanding of the urgency required for changes to merger regulations in the local and regional media sector".
Andrew Harrison, chief executive of RadioCentre emphasised the need for "legislative reform from government as an urgent priority".
And Carolyn McCall, chief executive of Guardian Media Group, stated she was pleased the pressures faced by regional media operations had "rightly moved up the Government's agenda".
But realistically, how high up the Government's agenda can Digital Britain now be?
Ben Bradshaw will no doubt be being briefed to within an inch of his life, and Carter, as an excellent operator and with his media background, is widely viewed as the right choice to deliver the plan - though how much more appealing the ITV job must look right now to him, one can only speculate.
But when your bosses are fighting for their own and the Government's future, while desperately putting together emergency legislative reform of Parliament itself, dealing with regulations surrounding media ownership and advertising would understandably take second place.
While Gordon Brown's future is looking as shaky as a number of media operations, the fact he has outlived many thousands of unfortunate commercial, creative and editorial staff who have already lost their jobs underlines the need to make good the early promise of the Digital Britain report.
In his speech at the release of the Digital Britain interim results, Brown described the event at the British Library as "what I believe is one of the most important conferences we will hold this year".
While one can only hope he meant what he said - and securing the future of the country's commercial and creative media industries is more important than who happens to be pushing through the paperwork - it is difficult to see how any reform will take place before a general election is fought and, likely, a new set of hands gets its chance to meddle.
