Media Perspective: Agencies fear Sky's Virgin row will drive away advertisers.(Associated Newspapers Holdings PLC and News International )(Virgin Media Group Ltd. and British Sky Broadcasting Group PLC. Sky Media)

Last week's spat between Associated Newspapers and News International over distribution of their free afternoon titles in London means that we now have two full-scale media battles in progress, both involving Rupert Murdoch companies.

While the Sky versus Virgin Media dispute has been raging for some time, it's taken a while for true hostilities between Associated and News International to begin. We cover this in more detail in the adjacent piece, so I won't touch on it in too much depth. Except to say that both companies seem to be facing the same distribution issues and that the relatively isolated cases of 'dumping' of copies by vendors seems less serious than the wider issue of getting 900,000 issues a day into the hands of commuters. Judging by the distribution of both papers mid-afternoon in Hammersmith, they seemed more likely to get into the hands of school kids and drunks than ABC1 office workers.

That said, the commercial impact of the free newspaper ruck seems far less significant than the Sky/Virgin Media barney. This has escalated in the past week with Virgin Media instigating its promised court action following the removal of Sky channels from the Virgin Media platform. Sky is also facing pressure from the regulators over its 18 per cent stake in ITV, with the Office of Fair Trading recommending to the Government that its acquisition of the stake be referred to the Competition Commission.

It's not hard to see why Sky has been robust ...