"Unless I've got that scale the business won't be as robust as it could be,"Mr Catalano said,adding he liked the regional broadcasters and radio stations but he believed they were"doomed in their current form".
One solution,he said,was"bring groups together"and he argued there was no longer a need for WIN TV,Prime Media and Southern Cross Austereo to all operate the same services in a small regional area.
Mr Catalano said when he bought the regional newspaper publishing business,which ownsThe Canberra Times and about 170 other titles,from Nine Entertainment Co for $125 million he was the"only bidder".
"It was a business in decline,"he said,adding that ACM was a profitable business but not in every part and claimed it had been under-resourced by Fairfax Media."The category is in crisis."
Centre for Media Transition co-director Peter Fray,who was also speaking on the panel,disagreed that regional media was in a crisis but said the businesses were"crying for attention".
"I'm not a big believer in government intervention but the reality of the situation is government can do things like the tax breaks,"Mr Fray said,though added the"government picking winners"was problematic and believed there would be community concerns about any changes to their news titles.
"Having said that I do think there's a lot of political will to ensure that whether there's a crisis or not it doesn't blow out,"he said.
McPherson Media Group director of content and audience Christine Anderson said one of the greatest challenges facing her media organisation was a loyal but ageing readership.
"[We] need to find ways to attract the next group of readers to see the value in paying for news,"she said.
Facebook partnership
Mr Catalano's ACM is one of 11 media publishers,including News Corp,The Guardian,The Conversation,Crikey andThe West Australian,who signed up to a new partnership with Facebook on Thursday as part of the launch of what's called a Local News Accelerator.
The initiative includes a focus on subscriptions and ways to generate revenue from readers and comes amid a government review of recommendations from the competition watchdog about how to mitigate the impact of the tech titans on Australian publishers and local news in particular.
Facebook has also signed several deals with major broadcasters to bring new video content to the social media site's Facebook Watch tab.
Representatives for Mr McCormack did not respond to request for comment by deadline.