[chinamug]

Maybe RTE should show less intrusive advertising though

Removing it completely isn't going to work, advertising on public stations can be found all over Europe; but with lower averages (somehow) than RTÉ/TG4

I wouldn't have a problem with something like ARD in Germany were there's no Advertising in Prime Time and limited Advertising at other times. Sponsorship of shows would also be okay especially special events and Sports, but the reality is that RTE should cut it's cloth to measure. It gets a certain amount a year from whatever replaces the licence fee and that's it. No spending 10 million extra and then going to the Government saying they can't count.

50% or so of TV advertising goes to UK channels, not much can be done about that (and advertisers spend money where the audience is) but the other 50% of the market is warped by RTE. If you pull them out of the market mostly, you'd hope it would provide more advertising to Virgin Media and perhaps other competitors that might enter the Irish Market.

Back in the 90's when people were interested in going for TV Broadcast licences in the Republic, they had a look at RTE's behaviour in the Radio Market (when they hobbled Century Radio) plus on top of that UTV grabbing huge amounts of Ad revenue from Belfast, a lot of sensible media players walked away. TV3 never made a profit until Virgin Media purchased them, in fact overall losses were over 200 million since it started. If you take RTE mostly out of the commerical market, it might make VMTV a profitable operation.