News Corp will add APN's Australian daily and community newspapers to its already dominant print media reach if regulators the ACCC and FIRB agree.
APN News & Media announced this morning that it had entered into "binding documentation" to divest the Australian Regional Media division to News Corp Ltd for $36.6 million.
Apart from the ACCC and FIRB, the transaction is also conditional the consent of "certain counterparties to the ARM business".
News Corp Australia already publishes national daily The Australian and metro daily the Courier-Mail in Queensland, plus regional dailies the Gold Coast Bulletin, Townsville Bulletin and Cairns Post and Brisbane suburban and community papers including those of its Quest division.
No other major publishers are active in the state, although Fairfax Media maintains a news website, brisbanetimes.com.au
Most of the APN newspapers in Australia came into News' possession with its acquisition of the Herald & Weekly Times in 1987, but were sold to members of Irish media mogul Tony O'Reilly's family (which formed the APN company in 1988) when the Australian government ruled that News could not control both the major capital city newspaper (the Courier-Mail) as well as a majority of country newspapers.
At the same time, Northern Star sold its daily rival Brisbane Daily Sun to a management group which after running up a bill for printing it with News, closed the title in 1992.
The question now remains whether the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission will now do anything to prevent the print monopoly it thwarted almost 30 years ago. That digital sites have appeared and gained importance in that period does not seem relevant while gains 82 per cent of its newsmedia publishing revenue from print.
The ARM division includes a portfolio of 12 daily newspapers, 60 community newspapers and nonâdaily publications, and more than 30 regional news websites and mobile sites in regional Queensland and Northern New South Wales. News Corp Australia is an APN shareholder and currently holds 14.9 per cent in APN. Shareholders will be required to vote on the proposed sale, which the company says is likely to take place in August. APN says net proceeds will "predominantly be used to pay down existing APN debt".
It is, as chairman Peter Cosgrove this morning described it, a "significant milestone" for APN, not only in pivoting its future towards radio and outdoor media, but - with the demerger of the NZME. business in New Zealand, cutting its links with the newsmedia business on which it was built.
Peter Coleman
Pictured: Fairfax Media sites report the sale