The calling of an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders to remove directors of public companies is an incredibly rare thing in Australia. Indeed, it has only happened once to an ASX200 company over the past 20 years when Kerry Stokes failed in his initial attempt to purge the board of WA News in 2008.

The ongoing circus at Ten Network Holdings under acting-CEO Lachlan Murdoch is stirring a few activists into looking seriously at a mid-year EGM to remove Murdoch and billionaire mining heiress Gina Rinehart from the board.

Ten today revealed a disappointing drop in television EBITDA to $92 million for the half year. By way of contrast, Seven is predicting full year EBITDA of $373 million from its television operations in 2010-11. While Lachlan can’t be blamed for that, his solutions don’t look too flash.

Now that climate-change denier Rinehart has got her way and Lachie has signed Andrew Bolt to a new show — The Bolt Report, a new 10am Sunday vehicle to launch on May 8 — it will probably be the clincher that leads to the gathering of the necessary 100 signatures from shareholders for an EGM. Legendary UK magazine Private Eye summed up Lachlan’s record well with these observations last month:

But what of Lachlan Murdoch, the accident-prone son whose financial foul-ups have often been chronicled in these pages? He has marked the old man’s birthday with yet another disaster.

Last year Lachie joined James Packer in a share raid on Ten and all seemed sweet and jolly as they swiftly moved on to the board and began purging the previous regime, which they thought was spending too much on “quality” journalism.

A spree of high level sackings saw Young Lachie stepping in as temporary CEO, his first major media role since bailing out of the Dirty Digger’s operations in 2005.

But his appointment of one James Warburton to take day to day charge of Ten has infuriated Packer, who resigned from Ten’s board.

It seems Packer and Stokes had a deal not to poach each other’s talent — an arrangement now torn apart by clumsy Lachie’s recruitment of Warburton.

As if that weren’t enough, an Australian liquidator is still pursuing James Packer and Lachlan Murdoch through the courts, seeking $500 million in compensation for investors in their failed phone company One.Tel, 10 years after its collapse.

If the Digger wants to bestow a birthday favour, perhaps he’ll pay Lachie to take early retirement before the gormless chump goofs again.

It’s an interesting question as to just why Lachlan Murdoch is acting-CEO of Ten and how much he is being paid to do the job? After all, this is the bloke who also contributed substantially to the $500 million-plus News Ltd dropped on Super League.

His stewardship of the New York Post turned it into the biggest loss-making newspapers in the world and then he ultimately departed with a $10 million payout in 2005 after blundering through the Fox Television business. Lachlan was well-known within News Corp for being very tight with money. Indeed, when in the US he even used to claim for his home AOL email account.

Seven Network directors have been putting it around that James Packer has supported Lachlan in raising the $128 million to buy half of his 17.88% stake in Ten. When Lachlan joined the Ten board on December 13, his initial shareholder disclosure included the line that “the parties propose to act in concert in relation to the exercise of votes attached to the shares”.

The actual share sale deed said that  Lachlan and James also had “customary pre-emptive rights in favour of each other” and that they would “enter into good faith negotiations and attempt to agree definitive documents to give effect to their intention”. But they were diametrically opposed in the board room when it came to voting on the proposed appointment of James Warburton as Ten CEO.

The full implications of the Packer-Murdoch fallout would be tested at an EGM seeking Lachlan’s removal.

Given that Rinehart and Packer are fans of Andrew Bolt, it is possible that Lachie is attempting to repair some of the damage by foisting Bolt’s belligerent views on Ten’s progressive Gen Y viewers. However, Bolt has performed woefully on MTR over the past year and the potential for further damage in Justice Bromberg’s forthcoming judgment means this could turn into another Lachie blunder.

Now Bolt is signed — his show will air leading into the existing political panel show Meet The Press at 10.30am — expect various activists to team up to call an EGM seeking the removal of Rinehart and Murdoch from the Ten board.

Thursday July 14 would be a good date for any EGM as that was when Lachie said Warburton would be starting when his recruitment coup was announced on March 2.

That’s now looking less likely as the legal battle rages, so Ten shareholders might have to put up with Lachie as acting-CEO for even longer and he would be front and centre at the EGM.