Australia Opens Up Media Sector

Australia has scrapped its foreign media ownership and cross-media restrictions today - giving Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd, Lord Rothermere's Daily Mail & General Trust and Tony O'Reilly's Independent News & Media the chance to expand their empires.

The Australian government announced today that laws preventing press barons owning newspapers and television channels in the same city will be scrapped as long as there are at least five "independent voices" in metropolitan markets and four in regional areas.

Foreign ownership restrictions, which prevented Canadian company CanWest from owning more than 15% of the Ten Network will be scrapped.

But foreign media ownership will remain a "sensitive" sector under the government's foreign investment policy.

The biggest shakeup of the A$12bn (£5bn) industry in 20 years means Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd, which owns 70% of the newspaper market, could expand into television or radio.

Mr O'Reilly, who owns regional papers in Queensland and New South Wales, could add a regional TV network to his locally listed APN News & Media while Lord Rothermere's DMGT, which owns the highly successful Nova radio network and the struggling Vega radio network, could expand.

The reforms announced by the communications minister, Helen Coonan, will allow pay-TV operators such as Foxtel, owned jointly by News Ltd and telephone company Telstra, to buy more pay TV rights.

Previously many important sports such as national rugby league and Australian rules football feature on the government's anti-siphoning list - free-to-air television stations have to win broadcasting rights.

Now free-to-air channels will be awarded rights on a "use-it-or-lose-it" basis, so commercial stations will be barred from buying TV rights and warehousing them to prevent pay TV channels screening them.

Australia will delay digital switchover from 2008 to between 2010 and 2012, while genre restrictions of digital channels for government-owned broadcasters ABC and SBS will be lifted.