Memories can be short in the constantly troubled field of media ownership regulation. Who remembers all the fuss in 2007 as the Howard government’s were pushed through? Back then there was talk of people crossing the floor. Political careers were in the balance.

Yet earlier this month Minister for Communications Stephen Conroy announced a review of the laws that help guarantee minimum levels of local content on regional radio, and there was hardly a murmur.

Submissions to this review close in just 10 days. Naturally, commercial radio operators will be pushing hard to be freed from requirements forcing them to maintain local newsrooms and minimum levels of costly local content.

And so far there has been hardly a breath of parliamentary debate or media attention.

Doubtless inside the regional media mega-organisations of Fairfax and APN, keyboards are being hammered in the writing of submissions arguing  for relief from minimum local content requirements.

And remember that this is happening at the same time as Fairfax and APN are attacking  the ABC for its plans to create a network of websites for rural Australia.

Let’s backtrack. The changes to media ownership regulation that came in to force in 2007 removed the restrictions on cross media ownership. Instead of having to be either “princes of print or queens of the screen”, one owner could control any two out of print, radio and television in a single market, so long as there was a minimum number of “voices” — four in regional areas, and five in the big cities.

One of the main things people were exercised about at the time was the impact in rural Australia, and particularly in radio, where even before the changes went through many so-called “local” stations broadcast homogenised “hubbed” content.

Under the new laws there was nothing to prevent a single group such as Fairfax Media or Macquarie or APN from owning the local newspaper and a local radio station, providing there were at least four “voices” in the region. What was to prevent the amalgamation of newsrooms, even more “hubbing” of content, the cutting the numbers of reporters and resulting reductions in the amount of local reporting?

The government bowed to these concerns by introducing strict rules requiring regional commercial radio to broadcast minimum levels of “material of local significance”. For most, this meant three hours a day of local content on week days.

And if a radio licence changed hands or became part of a new cross media group, then extra requirements came in to force mandating at least five local news bulletins and weather reports per week, minimum levels of community service announcements, and freezing “local presence” —  the numbers staff and studios — at the levels immediately preceding the change in ownership.

Now these laws have not always worked as intended, as a report by Media Watch last year made clear.

But they have given regional audiences some guarantees that their media will remain at least a little relevant to their area.

Now all this is up for grabs.

In a discussion paper issued earlier this month, the government anticipates changing the restrictions that force media proprietors to maintain levels of local presence after a change in ownership.

Some of the changes anticipated are sensible. For example, it is suggested that radio stations that exist to broadcast city race meetings to country areas should not be required to also meet local content requirements. That’s probably fair enough.

Other issues should be getting more critical attention — such as changes to the rules that apply after a regional radio licence has changed hands or a new cross media group is formed. The suggestion is that “locking in” the levels of local presence indefinitely is unfair.

If the “locking in” requirement goes, then we can expect many of those regional radio stations that have changed hands or become part of bigger groups since to be affected. Amalgamated newsrooms. Hubbed content. Fewer jobs for reporters. The lot.

The government plans to publish the submissions to its review after April 1.  Crikey will be keeping an eye on it, and hopes that at least some of the politicians and activists who were so exercised about the issue three years ago will be doing likewise.