Competition policy and sector-specific economic media regulation: and never the twain shall meet?

This paper studies the relationship between competition policy regulation and sector-specific regulation in the regulation of media markets. It takes as its starting point the stated intention of the EU Commission in its proposal for regulatory reform of electronic communication services, i.e. to "roll back" sector-specific regulation to general competition policy regulation of markets for electronic communication services, and discusses the relevance of this policy proposition for the regulation of media markets. Following a description of characteristics of approaches and instruments of sector-specific and competition regulation, respectively, models for organising the division of labour and responsibility between the two policy areas are discussed. The analysis is then applied to the Norwegian case of media regulation; in particular, the ownership regulation of media as practiced in Norway. A fundamental issue is how to reconcile the regulatory objective of economic efficiency in competition policy regulation with safeguarding the objectives of freedom of expression and independence of media from ownership and political influence in media regulation. This is discussed in the paper in relation to new legislation proposed by the Norwegian government with regard to Article 100 in the Constitution and writing the self-regulation of the "Redaktørplakaten" into law. On this basis it is tentatively concluded that economic sector-regulation can be separated form other forms of media regulation and that the former could be rolled back to competition regulation, as a long-term proposition.