This Sunday is Super Bowl Sunday, the biggest advertising event in the US, with prices for 30-second slots averaging $2 million. Last year, advertisers called the game the dot.com bowl because of the preponderance of technology companies booking slots. This year it's a different story. Of the 17 present last year, only three have returned - Hotjobs, Monster.com and E-Trade, a securities firm that will rerun the advertisement it made specially for last year's game.

Mr Aidan Dunne at MCM has done some Glenroe number crunching and his findings support the decision to axe it. Five years ago Glenroe had an adult rating of 40; last week it was 18.3. The programme has also aged. Forty-two per cent of viewers are over 55, among whom it achieves a 54 per cent viewing figure. By contrast, its share among 20- to 44year-olds is 32 per cent. The combination of a declining and an ageing audience means continued investment is difficult to justify.