One more thing:Bubble Hits, the Irish music television station, celebrated its first birthday recently and abridged accounts just filed show that its net assets increased in the year to the end of February 2007 to €768,202 from €644,012 a year earlier.
This arises mainly from a sharp increase in the level of fixed assets owned by Creative Sounds Ltd, which rose to €615,518 last year from €236,365.
Founded by young bucks James Hyland and Lee Walsh, Bubble Hits is carried on NTL, Chorus, Sky, Magnet Entertainment and Smart Vision. Its presenters include model Glenda Gilson.
No revenue or profits figures are detailed in the accounts. But they do show that bank loans are secured on a life policy for the directors with Ark Life Assurance for €277,500 and a letter of guarantee from the directors for €391,835. AIB also retains an undertaking in relation to an office property in the Ashbourne town centre in Meath.
The accounts also state that Creative Sounds has loaned €506,095 to a UK subsidiary of the same name. Creative Sounds UK also "owes trade debts" of €152,206 to its Irish parent group.
Hyland has previously said the group is loss-making, without stating the extent of the losses.
The station recently began running commercial breaks having shunned this as a form of revenue in favour of programme sponsorship. Hyland was reported as saying the station was "ahead of our time" with its original, novel approach to earning revenue by shunning advertisement breaks. He was clearly alone in holding that view.
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