Local Media Assessment Guidance

Ofcom is publishing draft Local Media Assessment Guidance (LMA Guidance) which sets out Ofcom's proposed approach to providing the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) with Local Media Assessments (LMA's). The purpose of this consultation is to invite comments on the draft.

LMA's have their origins in the Government's Digital Britain Interim Report ^(-1-). The report referred to local media groups views that the transition to digital business models requires consolidation but the current media merger regime does not take account of potential cross-media competition ^(-2-). Prompted by this report, the OFT conducted a Review of the Local and Regional Media Merger Regime ^(-3-).

The OFT subsequently concluded that the existing merger regime is flexible and evidence-based, and thus able to take into account the various considerations raised. Nonetheless, in recognition of the benefit available from Ofcom's knowledge of the media sector, the OFT proposed that in local media merger cases raising prima facie competition concerns, the OFT would ask Ofcom to provide them with an LMA ^(-4-).

The OFT's revised Jurisdictional and Procedural Merger Guidance published in June 2009 confirmed this provision ^(-5-). LMAs are therefore a new element in the existing OFT's merger procedure. They are a more formalised way for Ofcom to assist the OFT in its assessment of mergers involving local media.

The Digital Britain Final Report, the OFT's Review of the Local and Regional Media Merger Regime and the OFT's new Jurisdictional and Procedural Merger Guidance each provide an indication of what issues future LMA's may cover. Ofcom has carried out further work in order to define in more detail the potential scope, the content and the process of conducting LMA's. In the course of this process Ofcom has worked closely with the OFT, which has provided advice and comments on Ofcom's proposed LMA Guidance.

Ofcom is inviting comments on its draft LMA Guidance. Ofcom is particularly interested in stakeholders views on:

• whether the draft LMA Guidance correctly identifies the issues that may be relevant to local media mergers;
• and whether the proposed process is sufficiently clear and avoids unnecessary burden on the merging parties and others.

The consultation period ends on the 20th of September 2010.

Responses

Responder name	Type
Trinity_Mirror_plc_submissi1.pdf (PDF File, 52.5 KB)	Organisation