The future of both press regulation and the Defamation Bill could be decided this week as the Government puts forward its proposals for a Royal Charter to recognise the new press regulator. The Royal Charter plan is set to be announced today, followed by all-party talks on Thursday Then the press industry is expected to issue its response, possibly next week.

January national newspaper ABC figures, published last week, revealed that FT sales were down 3.85% compared with December, to 275,375. Now, as the paper prepares to celebrate its 125th anniversary on Wednesday, Lionel Barber, who has edited the paper since 2005, has unveiled his latest "digital first" initiative. It amounts to a combination of a production shake-up, a strategic change of direction for the international editions and, inevitably, staff cuts.

The government will publish its long-awaited royal charter setting up a "verifier" to oversee a new press regulator next week, forcing Labour to decide whether it is going to accept this compromise or hold out for the form of regulation recommended by Lord Leveson in his report. Labour is divided on its response and the issue became complicated by peers voting, earlier this week, to introduce a Leveson-style arbitration system into the defamation bill.

The Times has 24 nominations, The Daily Telegraph has 20 and the Daily Mail has 19, followed by The Sunday Times (17), The Guardian (16), The Daily Mirror (11) and The Independent (11). There are 29 categories at The Press Awards and winners will be announced at a dinner at the Lancaster London Hotel, Lancaster Gate, on Thursday 7 March, 2013. Nominees for the Digital Award are: Mail Online, FT.com, Guardian Interactive Team, Guardian.co.uk, The Daily Telegraph Sports Team, andThe Times.

The announcement follows Ofcom awarding the Evening Standard the licence to run a digital terrestrial local TV service in London last week. YourTV Manchester has the right to run the channel for up to 12 years with an audience reach of around one million homes. It is hoped that some local TV channels will be up and running by the end of the year.

The BBC Trust has confirmed that there will be up to 40 hours of programming across multiple genres on BBC iPlayer before it gets slotted into TV schedules. The move comes as the BBC tries to increase the proportion of television viewers that use its streaming platform. With iPlayer only accounting for 1/50th of the corporations viewing figures, the idea of this 12-month trial will be to build excitement for new shows, and get people onto the iPlayer site.

Both firms are planning to launch a multi-device playback via Virgin TV Anywhere. Virgin Media and movies on-demand provider, FilmFlex, have renewed their collaboration on developing new technology for Virgin Movies. As part of the multi-year agreement, both firms will be engaged in development, rollout and management of new video-on-demand (VoD) services in addition to procurement and curating film content for Virgin Movies.

Features of the new app include news, live scores, stats, commentary and analysis for audiences on-the-go. It also offers a customisable menu, allowing users to select their favourite sports to follow. It launches just ahead of a busy 2013 sporting calendar which includes the UK Premier League, Rugby Union Six Nations Championship and the upcoming F1 season.

Barry Fitzpatrick, the NUJ deputy general secretary, said he was "deeply concerned" at the cost-cutting measures, outlined in an email to staff on Thursday. The Independent's National Union of Journalists chapel said last week it would ballot for industrial action if compulsory redundancies were made. Plans to merge the two desks include the appointment of a new editor for both by the end of this week, said the NUJ.

The Hearst Magazines UK-owned website recorded 20,065,530 browsers in January 2013, according to Google Analytics, with page views hitting 163,828,512 million in the month. Digital Spy has grown by 62% over the past year and added 5m additional browsers since October 2012, including significant gains across the tech, games, movies and music channels. Digital Spy has also seen a 100% year-on-year increase in video streams, with more than 24 million views in 2012.