The Association of News Retailing (ANR) and the National Federation of Retail Newsagents (NFRN) are calling on the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) to refer the newspaper and magazine industry to the Competition Commission (CC) for a full market investigation.
The ANR and the NFRN said in making this joint request, they are telling the OFT that self-regulation in the news industry, without the force of legal under-pinning, does not work.
The associations are also expressing their “deep concern” over recent publisher/distributor – wholesaler contract changes, which aim to exclude Dawson News from the market and lead to a duopoly between Smiths News and Menzies Distribution.
“This rides a coach and horses through the OFT’s written Opinion, published in October 2008, in which it called for more competition at the magazine wholesaling level,” said the trade bodies.
In a jointly-supported submission, the retail associations have also raised concerns with the OFT over other key market features that the OFT did not investigate fully, when making its initial decision not to make a recommended for a full market investigation to the CC.
“In the retailers’ view, the case for a full market investigation is now overwhelming,” they said.
