Big business has poured more sponsorship cash into the Millennium Dome than any other project in history, but what reward, if any, have they reaped? The Money Programme (Sunday, 7.30 p.m., BBC2) sets out to see if some of Britain's leading companies have won accolades or taken a bruising.
Agenda (Sunday, noon, TV 3) looks at the effect of e-commerce on retail banking. Global analyst Mr Vikas Nath forecasts a bleak future for banks as we know them with huge job losses on the way. Presenter David McWilliams discusses the issue with leading bankers.
"I no longer believe the future will deliver some pristine information superhighway rich in opportunity and reward. Instead, the future will deliver the death of privacy. It will be an edifice which fuses flesh and machine so intimately that every one of us will be exposed almost completely to the world," says Simon Davies, director general of Privacy International, a human rights group. Mr Davies tells Counterblast: The Death of Privacy (Monday, 7.30 p.m., BBC2) how he came to this gloomy conclusion.
A year ago Ear to the Ground (Monday, 8.30 p.m., RTE 1) featured a promising alternative farm enterprise near Dunshaughlin in Co Meath. Now plans are at an advanced stage to build a new roadway to bypass the village - straight through the farm. The programme asks if it is inevitable that economic progress means such destruction of farms and homes?
The programme also investigates whether farming partnerships for profit can work. The Department of Agriculture believes they can and has set up a committee to make them happen.
Is supermarket psychology all just hot air? It's Your Money (Tuesday, 8.00 p.m., RTE 1) the consumer-focused business programme looks at product placement in supermarkets, the spectacular success of security software e-commerce company, Trintech, tax breaks for Irish fiction and the pension timebomb.
Mr John and Mr Cyril McGuire of Trintech discuss the huge success of their company. It became a £1 billion company late last year, valuing the McGuires' stake at $504 million (€515.6 million). Its current biggest market is Germany but it plans to break into the US market this year.
Stockbroker, Ian, has decided to invest his £20,000 savings by setting up a hairdressing salon for his best friend, Jane. However, Jane's partner, Chris, opposes the proposition. Best Friends (Wednesday, 11 p.m., Channel 4) looks at what affect money and business can have on close relationships.
sokelly@irish-times.ie
