The Wentworth Courier's 15 year hold on real estate advertising in Sydney's eastern suburbs is over, after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission on Thursday revoked the paper's exclusive dealing notification it has held since 1993, The Sydney Morning Herald reported Friday

The complaint that the deal was anti-competitive was placed by Fairfax Media, which reported the deal gave the Courier “immunity from court action.”

The contracts gave agents significantly lower advertising rates, but in return, required them to place 75 percent of their total print display advertising in the Courier, The Sydney Morning Herald, a Fairfax-owned newspaper, reported.

“Importantly, the current advertising discounts offered by the Wentworth Courier are not necessarily lower than those that would be offered in a more competitive environment,” said Graeme Samuel, the commission's chairman, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. Samuel also said the contracts made it nearly impossible for other local newspapers to compete.

In 2006, Western and Eastern Europe had the highest mobile density in the world, according to research firm IDATE.

In 2002, the leading regions with highest density were Western Europe and advanced Asian economies, with 79 percent and 68 percent penetration, respectively. Eastern Europe and North America, on the other hand, followed behind, both with mobile reach of about 50 percent.

In 2006, reach in Western Europe jumped to 109 percent, while in Eastern Europe penetration increased nearly two-fold, from 53 percent to 101 percent. In advanced economic countries in Asia and in North America the mobile density reached 84 percent and 76 percent, respectively. However, in developing Asian economies and Sub-Saharan Africa, the reach was still less than 30 percent.

The mobile density was defined as the number of mobile customer per 100 inhabitants, according to IDATE.

The Times is set to launch the first phase of its full-colour redesign Monday, the Guardian reported Friday.

The paper's redesign will include an expanded times2 features section, as well as offer more full page spreads, and will focus on weekly editions, not the Saturday edition.

A small team at Times publisher News International has worked on the redesign and revamp, the Guardian reported.

The Times assistant editor, Anoushka Healy, led preparations for the full-colour edition. Ben Preston, former deputy editor, lead the last Times redesign in November 2006, when a new font, Times Modern, was introduced. Neville Brody, former The Face art director, created the new font, according to the Guardian.

In 2004, the Times switched to a tabloid format, and overtook the Telegraph in full-rate sales for the first time.

Tribune Company is looking sell another one of its businesses, this time its Tribune Media Services unit, in an attempt to increase its short-term liquidity, in order to increase its short-term liquidity, the Financial Times reported Thursday.

TMS is a Tribune subsidiary, and distributes syndicated content, such as columns and comic strips, as well as providing movie and TV listings.

The Chicago-based Tribune Co. is the second largest U.S. newspaper publisher, and is about US$13 billion in debt, US$1.84 billion of which is due in 2008 and 2009, FT reported. It was bought by real estate investor Sam Zell last year.

Although Zell had said he would not sell any of Tribune Co.'s 11 newspapers, last month he agreed to sell tabloid Newsday to cable company Cablevision, to pay down some of its debts. Other newspapers owned by Tribune include the Los Angeles Times and flagship Chicago Tribune.

TMS generates about $25 million a year, before interest, taxes, amortisation and depreciation, and could be worth about $200 million on the auction block, FT reported.

Tribune is also looking to sell to the Chicago Cubs baseball team and the team's home base, Wrigley Field stadium.

The global mobile customer base has grown from 945 million in 2001 to 2.6 billion in 2006, according to consulting and research firm IDATE.

In 2001, more than 60 percent of the base, or 576 million, came from industrialised countries, while 369 million were from developing countries. In 2006, however, those in developing countries have surpassed those in industrialised countries, with 1.7 billion, or 66 percent, versus the 886 million in industrialised countries.

In terms of penetration, or the number of customers/lines per 100 inhabitants, the rate in industrialised countries was already 60.9 percent in 2001, while in developing countries it was merely 7.4 percent. In 2006, the rate in industrialised countries reached 91.8 percent, which is almost saturated, while in developing countries, the rate grew to 32.1 percent, still having much room to grow, IDATE reported.

One of the Netherlands' wealthiest people and owner of the free daily De Pers, Marcel Boekhoorn, bought a five percent stake in Telegraaf Media Group (TMG), Newspaper Innovation reported Wednesday.

TMG publishes De Telegraaf, local newspapers, free daily Spits and free local weekly papers. The group also publishes magazines and has a large stake in Sky Radio in the Netherlands.

Boekhoorn said he believes TMG's profits can be improved, according to Newspaper Innovation.

Hollinger Inc. will no longer have control of the Sun-Times Media Group (STMG), after a Canadian court approved a deal allowing the two to go their separate ways, Editor & Publisher reported Tuesday.

Ontario Superior Court Judge Colin Campbell on Monday passed the settlement agreement that states all the litigation and disputes between STMG, Hollinger Inc. and Hollinger's largest secured creditor, Toronto firm Davidson Kempner Capital Management LLC are resolved.

The entirety of Hollinger Inc.'s Class B shares, with 10-to-1 voting rights permitted to have a 70 percent voting stake in STMG with around 19 percent equity interest, will be transformed to Class A shares with one vote per share. Meanwhile, Davidson Kempner will receive a 20 percent stake in STMG, E&P reported.

“This is another step in achieving the goals we have laid out to our shareholders: improved operating performance, resolution of the Company's unique legacy issues, and exploration of strategic alternatives for the Company,” Cyrus F. Freidheim Jr., STMG president and CEO, said in a statement, according to E&P.

STMG is looking into strategic possibilities, which include the sale of all or few of its newspapers, E&P reported.

The Irish telecommunications billionaire Denis O'Brien, is increasing his Independent News and Media (INM) stake within to 22.7 percent, closing in on a level in which he will have more of a say on the media group's policy, the Financial Times reported Tuesday.

O'Brien has been expanding his stake in the Dublin-based media group throughout the past year, and has been a critic of the company's corporate governance and performance.

O'Brien's INM stake close to reaching the 25 percent level, which would give him the power to call emergency meetings and block resolutions. Sir Anthony O'Reilly remains the company's biggest shareholder, and has called O'Brien a “dissident shareholder.” O'Reilly's son, Gavin O'Reilly, is chief operating officer of INM, and also president of the World Association of Newspapers' executive committee and board.

The company's annual meeting will be held on June 11, and O'Brien is expected to pressure the company over retaining ownership of the Independent and Independent on Sunday in the United Kingdom, which have been loss-making, as well as investments in Australia and South Africa, the Financial Times reported.

Trinity Mirror's latest title to revamp its Web site is the Hounslow & Heston Chronicle, which now offers breaking news and photos, and also serves as a portal to its hyperlocal sites, HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk reported Tuesday.

Hounslowchronicle.co.uk also features tools to search for homes, cars and jobs, and its hyperlocal sections are for users to reverse publish material they care about.

The Editorial staff has been publishing a print project similar to the hyperlocal sites, called Retro, which features hyperlocal village and district news, according to HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk.

The paper is part of the weekly paid Middlesex Chronicle.

“The arrival of hounslowchronicle.co.uk is undoubtedly the key development for the future of the Chronicle brand,” Janice Raycroft, the paper's editor, told Holdthefrontpage.co.uk. “From this week the service we offer readers and advertisers is unsurpassed and taking a clear – and very exciting – direction to the future of multimedia publishing.”

Media ownership rules in the United Kingdom are unfairly heavy-handed on traditional players like newspapers, while the digital companies they have to compete with, especially Google, are free to do – and grow – as they please, Trinity Mirror's chief executive has said, The Sunday Times reported.

Google and other digital rivals do not fall under the rule of the 2003 Communications Act, which has strict ownership and market share rules down to the local level, and traditional media are increasingly feeling the sting as digital companies go unregulated, while they are powerless to fight back, Sly Bailey told the House of Lords communications committee last week.

“I am not arguing that they should be regulated more, I am arguing that we should be regulated less,” she said, according to The Sunday Times.

Without the 2003 Communications Act to hold it back, Google's UK income is set to exceed ITV in 2008, and total Internet ad spending is on track to overtake the entire television sector in 2009. It currently commands half the £3 billion online ad market in the United Kingdom, and is expanding at 30 percent a year, The Sunday Times reported. Meanwhile Trinity Mirror had to close eight newspapers in Peterborough and Derby earlier this month, and could not sell them to regional and local newspaper publisher Johnston Press because competition authorities believed the sale would break media ownership rules.

Cablevision is the latest in a line of four owners to take over Newsday since 1995, and the newspaper's staffers and readers wonder if it will still have the independence to critique itself and its new corporate owners once the sale is complete, not to mention if the cable company is prepared to run a newspaper, The New York Times reported Monday.

“Not so long ago, Newsday belonged to the front rank of American journalism. It reached far beyond its original role as chronicler of Long Island, covered news worldwide, undertook big reporting projects and even had the audacity to take on the New York City market. But since 1995, a series of owners and managers has chipped away at Newsday's news budget and its mission, turning it into something smaller, more local and, in many ways, less ambitious — a good regional newspaper,” states The New York Times article, by Richard Pérez-Peña.

Cablevision, which has never owned a newspaper, bought Newsday for US$650 million earlier this month. Owned by the Dolan family, the high-speed Internet, digital cable TV and digital voice services company has never had the best of relationships with the news media, The New York Times reported, which leaves reporters and editors at the paper on edge.