Rupert the bugbear

3 July 2003

Anxious about letting Rupert Murdoch dominate TV, British legislators have put a brake on a planned relaxation of media ownership rules. Putting their worries about bias to one side, this is a nuisance for BSkyB’s business. It covets terrestrial TV simply as a marketing tool.

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The British government will modify its plans to partially deregulate media ownership. In the face of strong opposition from members of the House of Lords, it has agreed to modify a clause in the Communication Bill labelled by opponents the "Murdoch clause" that would have allowed newspaper owners to buy the terrestrial TV station Five. The revised proposal will subject such mergers to a plurality test, to be applied by the new media regulator which the Bill creates. The plurality test is intended to supplement competition law by preventing any one media owner from dominating output.

Lord Puttnam, the former film producer who has led opposition to the deregulation measures in the Bill, said the new restriction would prevent Rupert Murdoch from ever being able to take over Five He added that he wanted to prevent the "Berlusconiisation" of Britain, a reference to Silvio Berlusconi, the prime minister, who is perceived as controlling large sections of the country's media.

The Communications Bill also relaxes national ownership restrictions, in principle making it easier for nonEU firms to buy British media assets.

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