Who wants to be a successful TV production player?

Tyrone Productions, the television firm, plans to expand in the British market by setting up an operation there or through an acquisition, its managing director has said.

Ms Joan Egan, who is leading the production of RTE's Who Wants to be a Millionaire? quiz, said such a move would enable Tyrone to consolidate its position while developing projects including drama and programmes incorporating the Internet. The company also wants to develop a full-length commercial feature film.

If an acquisition does not happen, Tyrone will seek "like-minded" people to develop a British-based operation. "That would be very valuable for us," said Ms Egan, who heads the company owned by Riverdance founders Ms Moya Doherty and her husband Mr John McColgan.

Eircom's mobile phone subsidiary Eircell is believed to have committed some £7 million (€8.9 million) to the quiz fronted by Gay Byrne, which will be launched next week.

Other groups who are said to have expressed interest in sponsoring the programme include Eircell's rival Esat Digifone, supermarkets Dunnes Stores and Tesco, and the National Lottery.

Ms Egan said the quiz, in which contestants can win big cash prizes, would not have been possible without corporate support. This is a growing trend, she said. "Sponsorship, whether we like it or not, is a reality that is going to have to be faced.

"We decided that if were going to do it that it had to be with bells and whistles. We were in discussions with RTE and TV3."

Ms Egan declined to reveal the sum Tyrone paid last year to acquire rights to produce the programme in the Republic.

Tyrone had revenues last year of between £3 million and £3.5 million, she said. "It will be higher this year." The bottomline profit margin on most programmes is about 10 per cent, though some shows made for US and Canadian broadcasters - such as the Gael Force music series - are produced on margins of about 15 per cent.

Ms Egan stressed that the television company operates separately from Abhann Productions, the company controlled by Ms Doherty and Mr McColgan which manages the lucrative Riverdance shows.

It was a myth that Tyrone operated on Riverdance money, said Ms Egan. Even so, the trendy look and comfort of a new office complex used by both companies just off Capel Street in central Dublin suggests that style and space were very high on the agenda when the building was being refurbished, not minimising costs.

Yet Ms Egan is clearly focused on the commercial angle. Like Mr McColgan, she started her television career at RTE in the 1960s before working in the independent sector in Britain.

Of her time at Yorkshire TV and ITN, Ms Egan said: "I think what it did was that it allowed me think of television as a business as distinct from a cottage industry."

After a break from work in the late 1970s and early 1980s when her two children were infants, Ms Egan established her own production company. In 1994, she joined Tyrone as a board member.

Few would argue that a show such as Who Wants to be a Millionaire? is anything other than a mass-market ratings vehicle, but Ms Egan has no difficulty with the concept. "We will be told we're copying Chris Tarrant. I don't make any apologies. It's high-end light entertainment."

At another level, the company is also involved - with Blue Angel Films - in the Beckett Film Project, in which each of Samuel Beckett's 19 plays are being filmed for RTE and Channel 4.

Ongoing productions include the Open House daytime series on RTE 1 and the Ros na Run soap opera on TG4, formerly Teilifis na Gaeilge.

Ms Egan acknowledges a difference between the creative and management elements of the television business. While much of her early career was spent developing technical expertise, the success of Riverdance called for the rapid development of commercial skills.

"There was an awful lot of learning," said Ms Egan. As well as deal-making, both in the Republic and abroad, tasks in her current role include such routine matters as logistical organisation.

Of her dealings with broadcasters, Ms Egan said: "You do wise up. You get to learn the real value of your projects."

As managing director of Tyrone, a privately-held company, she answers to its board. Mr McColgan and Ms Doherty are executive directors - other board members include Tyrone's finance director, Mr Padraig Wynn. Ms Egan is the beneficiary of a profit-sharing arrangement, but she does not hold equity in the company.

From Cornelscourt in south Dublin, she joined RTE as a production assistant straight from school in the late 1960s. Ms Egan's father and two grandfathers worked at Guinness. "I had one ambition in life - I didn't want to work in Guinness. My father's dream was to have me well looked after in Guinness."

At RTE, however, Ms Egan felt that it would difficult as a woman to progress through the ranks. This prompted her departure to Britain in the 1970s. While Ms Egan joined the State broadcaster in the era of black-and-white television, she leads an organisation today which operates in an industry being radically transformed by new technologies. Equipment is cheaper and smaller, and the advent of the Internet means "interactive" programming is also possible.

The most significant example of this so far was the Big Brother game show, broadcast in Britain last summer, in which people lived in a house under the constant glare of cameras that broadcast their images live on the Internet.

Does Ms Egan think an Irish version of the show is possible? "My feeling is that the Irish audience would be better served by an arrangement or version better suited to the Irish pysche."

Meanwhile, Tyrone is developing its own interactive show, entitled Wanderlust. Initially proposed by an in-house researcher and a producer, this will combine elements of an Internet-based dating game and a travel show. Contestants will arrange a date online with a person in a foreign city and the encounter - a la Blind Date - will be filmed by Tyrone.

Significantly, the company plans to sell rights to develop the programme outside the Republic - just as Tyrone bought the rights for the millionaire quiz. "My feeling for the company going forward is that the ownership of rights will be crucial."

Outside the interactive sphere, drama will also play a large role in Tyrone's future output. The company is currently developing a four-part medical drama series based on a novel by a Dublin-based doctor, Paul Carson, entitled Scalpel. This will be produced in association with either the BBC or ITV, and Parallel Films, the company behind the Amongst Women television series and the film, A Love Divided. Again, the plan is to sell the series beyond Ireland and Britain.

"If the people are real, there's no reason why we can't sell our drama abroad," she says.