Having somewhat talked it down by way of explaining its 2015 fall in profit, APN News & Media now faces the challenge of selling its Australian Regional Media business.

Chief executive Ciaran Davis announced the divestment last week, as part of a review of 2015 results.

Despite growth into digital, ARM is still primarily a print-driven operation, meaning that takers are likely get a bargain.

And despite the apparent conceit in Davis' claim that APN had been a long term "supporter" of print publishing - that is all APN (the initials stood for Australian Provincial Newspapers) was originally about - we're now looking at a familiar scenario: An increasingly lonely hen being segregated from its golden eggs.

It could of course (and may yet be) worse. And similar conceit was evident in the report in The Australian, which mentioned Warren Buffet and Rupert Murdoch in the same sentence, as if they were both philanthropically engaged with print. Sure Rupert gets a buzz out of print publishing, but that's partly because he's acutely aware of the influence it gives him... something that clearly makes all the losses of The Australian worthwhile. But I digress.

Back to ARN: Big takers or small?

It might be a big bite the Pakenham Thomas family's Star group - already on ARM's patch with the Noosa Today it bought from local investors - but private equity money is available - even to acquire print newspapers - for those who can buy at the right price.

Or a PE-backed management buyout, perhaps?

But the "management" who knows APN perhaps best of all is News Corp Australia executive chairman Michael Miller, having run it until late last year, and the two companies are already working together. Bundling the Brisbane Courier-Mail with APN digital subscriptions is an example, and no doubt helped its success.

Would the ACCC allow News Corp Australia to acquire APN ARM... and doubtless allow them to pick the eyes out of it? Quite possibly, regardless of the history of News having had to divest it in the first place. After all the Murdoch camp was allowed to pick up 15 per cent of APN News & Media without a murmur on competition grounds.

And the government needs as quiet a run as possible for currently-proposed media reform laws, where News needs more Foxtel-favourable legislation.

What to do with APN ARM's 12 daily newspapers and portfolio of 60 community and non-weekly publications and 30 regional news websites, most of them along the popular Queensland and NSW coast then?

News has form on the Sunshine Coast, where it bought Lindsay Bock's Noosa Journal through its Quest suburbans division, supplemented it with a couple of launches at the fast-growing Caloundra end of the coast, and then lost heart and closed the lot.

But that was with APN as a lively competitor: Generally major publishers have avoided competition in the regional market, where the isolated Gympie Times was transferred from Rural to APN, and a neat line divides APN and Fairfax interests further south.

That acquisition would change everything. News could align the Sunshine Coast Daily with the regional daily business which includes the Gold Coast Bulletin - though God forbid that they should grow alike.

The other dailies are smaller, mostly with four-figure print circulations, but the Daily Mercury in Mackay would be easy to slip into the North Queensland Newspapers stable with the Townsville Bulletin. So too, perhaps the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin - where Cameron O'Reilly cut his teeth - and the Gladstone Observer.

Bundaberg's News-Mail, the Fraser Coast Chronicle and the Gympie Times are perhaps more of a cluster with the Sunshine Coast mastheads, while in Ipswich - now almost a Brisbane suburb - the Queensland Times is surely a natural for Quest.

Further west, there's the Daily News in the rodeo town of Warwick - not so far from Ipswich, but pretty different in character - and The Chronicle in Toowoomba, another city with a unique character and demographic.

And finally, to the south, Lismore's Northern Star and the Grafton Daily Examiner define the point where APN country meets and modestly overlaps that of Fairfax Media, a publisher we haven't mentioned in a takeover context, but unlikely to take on more print publications for fear of investor revolt.

Those are the dailies, but that's not to say the first move wouldn't be to rationalise some (or all) into tri or biweekly publication. Even a free daily would be an option. I'd definitely keep the Sunshine Coast Daily because I know it best, but you wonder whether on aggregate APN makes more from the biweekly Noosa News, another masthead with a fat glossy real estate section, than it does from the daily.

News also does this segment relatively well, as I knew (as a former Avoca Beach resident) from the biweekly Central Coast Advocate, part of its Sydney-suburban Cumberland group.

The reality is that daily print newspapers have become harder and harder to sustain during the week, while the "push marketing" format of free-delivered weekly and biweekly titles continues to work for advertisers and publishers.

Readers look less to print dailies for "breaking news" and APN has exploited this change with a bigger focus on digital, and earlier deadlines for its daily print editions, many of which are printed hundreds of kilometres from their centres of publication.

Only the sense of "community" in each of its centres holds the ARM dailies together, and all the easy savings - including common national and international news pages and features - have already been made.

Davis knows that ARM is now ready to be pushed further into the digital age, and is selling presumably because a return on the necessary investment will not be easy or immediate.

What is certain is that any sale of the division is likely to bring radical change to what we see today.

Peter Coleman