Fairfax in "secret" bid for Ten?

Background: For those who aren't up to speed on Australian media ownership, Howard's Liberal Party's win in the Federal election last year will give them control of the Senate too come July this year. It's suggested that one of the items they'll push through is legislative change relaxing both cross-media and foreign media ownership restrictions.

This article from The Australian media section suggests the first big credible move will be Fairfax (a press & magazine publisher) buying up part or all of CanWest's 57.5% economic interest in Ten Holdings. It also considers the speculation that this will mean Nick Falloon will replace already-outgoing Fairfax CEO Fred Hilmer.

All of this speculation comes after Fairfax's (unsuccessful) attempts to buyout West Australian Newspapers and The Trading Post, leaving me thinking Ten's appeal to them is more from a financial perspective than simply to counteract Fairfax's older AB strength with Ten's strength in the 16-39 demo. It's hard to see, at least in the short-medium term what synergies there would be across the two organisations (compared with, for example, Seven buying out Pacific Publications a couple of years back). Perhaps it is all just about diversification and securing strong performers (Ten Holding's EBITDA for the 2004 financial year was up 33.4% on 2003 - Link to Ten's corporate site here).

Incidentally, how "secret" is a bid that's the top media story in The Oz?