David Norris (Independent)

However, it is reasonable that if a film channel is introduced, it should engage in some element of self-financing. I am not acquainted with the figures and, therefore, I am not sure whether the advertising proposed by Senator O'Reilly would pay for the entire station.

I am amused and perhaps we will hear more about what niche advertising in this sector implies. Is it that everybody boozes at home watching huge liquid television screens, which are large and flat and transmit good colour and precise definition and so on? To make it feel more like a cinema, will popcorn be advertised? I recall a wonderful film I saw years ago called "The Smallest Show on Earth". It was about a young couple who inherited a cinema, which they mistook to be big and flashy. It turned out to be a little bijou flea pit. To maximise their profits, they showed a film about a man struggling across a desert in great heat and conditions of extreme thirst. They turned up the heating to the maximum and then there was a slight intermission during which the ice cream girl was mobbed. Is that what is meant by advertising or some equivalent for television?