UPDATE 2-Trinity Mirror sees year in line with expectations

* Improvement in rate of revenue decline seen continuing

* In consultation on closing defined-benefit pension schemes

* Shares rise more than 3 percent

(Adds CFO, analyst comments, shares)

By Georgina Prodhan

LONDON, Nov 12 (Reuters) - British newspaper group Trinity Mirror (TNI.L) sees its rate of decline in revenues continuing to slow, echoing a trend seen by others in the industry, and said it was confident of meeting expectations for 2009.

Shares in the company rose 3.6 percent by 0825 GMT on Thursday, outperforming a flat European media index .SXMP.

The publisher of the Daily Mirror and a host of other national and regional titles said underlying advertising revenue had fallen 20 percent in the first 17 weeks of the second half, compared with a first-half decline of 28 percent.

"Whilst the trading environment will continue to be challenging over the remainder of the year and into 2010, we anticipate that the rate of decline in revenues will continue to improve," the company said in a statement on Thursday.

"This coupled with ongoing management initiatives to drive revenues and reduce costs will support profitability."

Chief Financial Officer Vijay Vaghela told Reuters the company understood expectations to be for adjusted operating profit of 94 million pounds ($156 million), a year-on-year decline of 35 percent, pretax profit of 69 million pounds, and earnings per share of 16.1 pence.

Morgan Stanley called the update encouraging and reiterated its "overweight" recommendation on the stock.

"The run-rate for advertising implies that growth is potentially possible as early as H2 2010. With 44 percent of revenues from advertising, Trinity is highly geared to an improvement in macro-conditions," its analysts wrote.

Johnston Press (JPR.L), the country's biggest regional newspaper group, reported on Wednesday that advertising revenue had fallen 22 percent in the first 18 weeks of the second half, better than the first-half decline of 33 percent.

The regional press has been worse hit than the nationals by a slump in advertising, particularly from the recruitment and property sectors.

Trinity Mirror has been aggressively restructuring to cope with the downturn, closing dozens of titles and cutting about 12 percent of its headcount, or about 1,000 jobs, in the past year.

Vaghela said most of those title closures were now done, with four titles closed in the second half, down from 22 in the first half. "I don't think you'll see anywhere near the scale of title closures you've seen over the last 18 months," he said.

Trinity Mirror, whose pension deficit was 275 million pounds at the end of June, also confirmed it had begun consultation with staff over a proposal to close its defined-benefit pension schemes to future accrual.

Vaghela said this could mean a doubling of its pension-deficit reductions to about 30 million pounds annually from next year, if the measure goes through. ($1=.6033 pounds) (Reporting by Georgina Prodhan, editing by Will Waterman and Mike Nesbit)