Rupert Murdoch's News Corp will sell bTV, the Bulgarian terrestrial broadcaster it owns, by the end of 2008, the head of the Council for Electronic Media (CEM), Maria Stefanova, told Bulgarian National Radio.

The regulator was notified of News Corp's intentions a month earlier through a letter signed by bTV's executive director Viki Politova and managing director Albert Parsons, Stefanova said.

Report in mid-July claimed that Bulgarian operations, along with two Latvian channels and Fox Televizija in Serbia, were being evaluated by investment bankers Lehman Brothers, hired by News Corp to "ascertain the value and strategic options" of the broadcasters.

The sale of bTV would run in parallel with similar processes in Latvia and Serbia, as well as a Polish broadcaster News Corp owned, Stefanova said.

The Bulgarian broadcaster is the biggest broadcaster put on the selling block and its sale could be wrapped up by the end of the year, with four unnamed bidders in the running, the CEM head said.

Media reports in July claimed three investment funds - Warburg Pincus, Advent International and GMT Communications Partners - were all interested to buy bTV.

If it goes through, it would become the third major deal involving a Bulgarian TV channel this year. In July, shortly after the rumours about bTV's sale surfaced, Ralph Lauder's Central Europe Media Enterprises (CME) bought terrestrial broacaster TV2 and cable broadcaster Ring TV for $172 million, followed by the sale of Bulgaria's second-largest terrestrial broadcaster Nova Television to Nordic media group MTG for 620 million euro.