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Department for Culture Media and Sport

media ownership

The Office of Communications (Ofcom) reviews the media ownership rules at least every three years and makes recommendations to us on necessary reforms.

We can intervene and prevent media mergers where we feel they are not in the public interest.

The Communications Act 2003

• Allows non-European Economic Area (EEA) persons to own Broadcasting Act licences
• Removed some but not all of the licence ownership restrictions affecting religious bodies
• Lifted the ban on local authorities holding licences  to broadcast information about their services
• Repealed the rules which prevented the joint ownership of channel three. The way is now clear for a single ITV, if the competition authorities are satisfied that a merger would not be anti-competitive
• Removed all ownership rules for channel five, which can now attract investment from any company
• Removed most of the ownership rules for the ITV news provider, while maintaining the quality obligations
• Prevents anyone owning more than one local digital multiplex in any area (most areas will only have one or two).
• Allows us to introduce an appointed news provider system for channel five, if their share of the audience is broadly equivalent to that of channel three
• Local radio ownership rules should ensure that wherever there is a well-developed choice of radio services, there will be at least 2 separate owners of local radio services, in addition to the BBC.
  

Current cross-media ownership rules

• There is a national '20%' rule:
  (a) no one controlling more than 20% of the national newspaper market may hold any licence for channel three
  (b) no one controlling more than 20% of the national newspaper market may hold more than a 20% stake in any channel three service
  (c) a company may not own more than a 20% share in a channel three service if more than 20% of its stock is in turn owned by a national newspaper proprietor with more than 20% of the market
• There is also a regional '20%' rule: no one owning a regional Channel 3 licence may own more than 20% of the local/regional newspaper market in the same region
• Rules on local radio ownership will ensure there are at least three/local/regional commercial media voices  (in TV, radio and newspapers) in addition to the BBC in developed markets.

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