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The Government’s cross-media ownership review should be completed soon, National Heritage Secretary Stephen Dorrell told MPs this week. `It is important to bring the process to a close because there are important issues to do with the structure of the market which need to be resolved,’ says Dorrell.

The revised European Broadcasting Directive due to be published later this month will retain the existing 50 per cent quota on non-European Union produced programmes, European Commission president Jacques Santer told a press conference in Brussels last weekend.

Reader’s Digest remains the UK’s best-selling magazine after a 1.3 per cent year-on-year increase in the latest ABCs to 1,673,306, although its circulation is down by 111,427 on the first six months of the year.

IPC SouthBank Publishing Group is to sell its young girls’ magazines My Guy, My Guy Weekly and now! because of increased paper prices. The buyer, a small publisher, will be announced later this week.

Only 18 per cent of people feel the BBC is too biased towards London and the South-East, according to CIA Sensor, the bi-weekly national survey by BMRB for CIA MediaLab. However, just 25 per cent regard the BBC as good value for the licence fee.

Media Sales & Marketing has restructured is agency sales department. Fiona Hosking has been promoted to agency sales controller, replacing Andy Oldham who has joined the MS&M board.

Nickelodeon enjoyed its best viewing levels late last month with an 18.4 per cent share of children’s viewing on February 22 – well ahead of nearest rival TCC with 9.6 per cent.

MTV Europe is reportedly negotiating with The Body Shop to provide the retailer with space on its pan-European transponder to broadcast a pan-European Green radio station.

Sales of EMAP’s Elle have risen 4.7 per cent to 230,996 in the July to December ABCs, while New Woman has fallen 1.9 per cent to 257,024.

Allied Domecq group media director Patrick Burton will chair Exploiting Media Information for Better Targeted Campaigns, a Marketing Week conference at London’s Le Meridien on April 7.