New bill will change media merger rules and allow regional press consolidation says Times

Ministers are quietly drawing up legislation that would tear up merger regimes for television, regional newspapers and local radio as part of the biggest shake-up in media regulation since the beginning of the decade, media editor Dan Sabbagh reports in The Times today.
He says : "A short Bill - the Digital Economy Bill - is being prepared to implement the conclusions of the Digital Britain review, which will determine the future of Channel 4 and is expected to provide help for struggling newspapers and broadcasters.
"Although it is a convention that ministers do not publicly discuss the Bills that comprise the Queen's Speech in the autumn, Andy Burnham, the Culture Secretary, has been privately telling media companies that new legislation is likely.
"The expectation of a Bill gives regional newspaper groups and radio companies hope that they will benefit from an easing of regulations, with the Government increasingly sympathetic to a relaxation of the rules that could allow consolidation between the publishers Trinity Mirror and Johnston Press."
The big regional newspaper groups, along with the Newspaper Society, have been urging the Government to relax the merger and acquisition rules applying to the local press at a time of economic crisis in the industry.