Income results from CanWest, the largest shareholder in TV3, indicate the Irish station has been selling its airtime at steep discounts. According to the Media Bureau, TV3 has been selling at an adult cost per thousand discount of 36 per cent on RTE's delivery price in the same period.

The discounts obviously won't be maintained as the station gains audience share but it will be difficult for the company to push up charges to match RTE's levels.

Irish Life & Permanent's £3 million (€3.8 million) media account has been won by Mindshare, the media company co-owned by Ogilvy & Mather and DDFH&B. Other agencies pitching for the account were MediaVest, the recently established independent media wing of QMP, which handles most of Irish Permanent's business; Des O'Meara's, which is Irish Life's main agency; and Initiative Media.

It is the second major success this week for Mindshare, which has just won the Murphy's stout media account, estimated to be worth in the region of £1 million.

At the New Media Age conference in Dublin tomorrow, Mr Antonio Silano for British media company Starcom IP will have both chilling and encouraging news for advertisers about the digital television environment.

Consumers will be able to download their favourite programmes for later viewing - much in the same way we do now with video recorders - but without the advertisement breaks. On the plus side is the potential for consumer interactivity. In Britain, for example, Walkers crisps has run an interactive advertisement whereby consumers click on an onscreen icon to indicate their flavour preference. The company then sends the consumer a pack of that flavour of crisps. Little wonder advertisers are looking at digital television as the biggest thing since the arrival of television advertisements in the 1950s.