Red-letter month for TV

David Hayes from CIA Mediator isn't overstating the case when he says that it's a red-letter month for Irish media.

On September 1st, the Sky opt-out started, whereby Irish advertisers could now buy time on the satellite channel. That could hoover up over £10 million (€12.7 million) in advertising revenue - mostly from existing budgets - in the next 12 months. Then came this week's news that Coronation Street was to migrate to TV3, which meant that the independent station would finally have a significant audience to hawk around the agencies. Not that Pat Kiely, the sales director at TV3, will have to do much hawking. Advertisers will go where the audience goes and there's every reason to expect a mass defection of both to the commercial station from January 1st.

"There's also a big inheritance factor," says Mr Peter McParland, media director at Irish International. "It's not just the slots between 7.30 p.m. and 8 p.m. four times a week that's affected; it's also the programmes immediately before and after." The loss in advertising revenue to RTE has been put at £10 million. It currently costs up to £4,500 to buy one of the 18 slots in and around the popular soap. The same time slot on TV3 now costs around £500. Once the audience migrates in the new year, there's every reason to expect a complete reversal of the figures.

Aside from the bottom-line revenue implications, this month's events might prompt RTE finally to change the way it sells space. Both TV3 and Sky sell packages based on the audiences they'll deliver. RTE still sells on the old pre-empt system - despite Diageo's costly attempt earlier this year to persuade it to do otherwise.

Another possible reaction could be an increase in advertising minutes. "This would be a great time for RTE to finally apply for an increase in advertising minutes," says Steve Shanahan, chief executive of the Institute of Advertising Practitioners in Ireland. "Both TV3 and Sky have the EU permitted nine minutes per hour of advertising, RTE has only six."

"Any major campaign that breaks on Monday is always going to go into Coronation Street," says Mr Hayes, "and that's not going to change".