Irish Psychics Live offer RTE a million

mike65

While I can't find a link, did anyone else hear a mention for ISL offering RTE a million euro for an advertising contract? I dunno how many companies have that kind of advertising spend for all media never mind RTE alone, but it can't be many.

Irish Psychics firm records €3m profit

11 March 2007 By Ian Kehoe
Retained profits at the company behind Irish Psychics Live, the premium rate telephone service, increased to more than €5 million last year, after the company made a pretax profit of almost €3 million.

Retained profits at the company behind Irish Psychics Live, the premium rate telephone service, increased to more than €5 million last year, after the company made a pretax profit of almost €3 million.

Realm Communications, the company behind the astrology phoneline, made a pretax profit of €2.9million for the year ending April 30, 2006.

This was a significant improvement on the previous year, when the company made €261,000 in pre-tax profits.

Realm is owned by the multimillionaire Irish businessman Tom Higgins.

In addition to Irish Psychics Live, the firm operates a number of other premium-line phone services, including Weathercall. According to accounts filed with the Companies Registration Office last week, Realm made a gross profit of €5.2 million in 2006, up from €1.7 million for the year before. The company had administrative expenses of €2.3 million. Realm employed ten people during the year and had a wage bill of €283,000.

Higgins did not draw a dividend from the business, which closed the year with more than €5.2 million in the bank.

Costing up to €2.90 a minute, Irish Psychics Live lines have between 35,000 and 40,000 regular users a year, with many running up annual bills of €2,500.

Of course he'll need the money to become Irelands first spaceman. (No cheap jokes please!)

Mike.

J.S. Pill

Who says aggressive secularism is taking over our country?? Clearly people still place their faith in higher powers.

I've just started working for Regtel, the utterley toothless regulator thats supposed to oversee these guys. I'll pass on any amusing anecdotes as I hear them.

**Disclaimer** REGTEL is, in fact, great

mike65

Careful now! That gimp has threatened boards.ie with legal action once already.

Mike.

monkeyfudge

I hope by gimp you mean Genuinely Important Man of the People.

blue4ever

May seem strange – but a Big One may not be as mad as you think!

I estimate that at his net – he needs 2,200 calls a day to cover that spend – not beyond the ‘Realm’ of possibility.

Consider further – Guinness Group (Diageo) spent €8.5m on telly last year. So its not mad – according to figures today to cover that (net €1 a pint of stout to Guinness) they had to sell 8.5m pints or 23,415 pints per day – not including Christmas and Good Friday

Cabaal

monkeyfudge wrote:

I hope by gimp you mean Genuinely Important Man of the People.

[SHOTGUN LOADING] why yes, yes he is

mike65

I would of course like to make it clear 'gimp' is a term of endearment where I come from. 'hem.

Mike.

Jackie laughlin

As far as I'm aware, the BCC has ruled against such advertising and RTE would be precluded from taking up such an offer, if it were made.

Dave!

Anybody got a link to that interview Pat Kenny did with a bloke from this company? The one he got in trouble over for giving them a bollocking....

copacetic

Jackie laughlin wrote:

As far as I'm aware, the BCC has ruled against such advertising and RTE would be precluded from taking up such an offer, if it were made.

Why would RTE be precluded from taking up such an offer?

lostexpectation

what other lines like this does he run

the firm operates a number of other premium-line phone services, including Weathercall

don't see on his site, is it this weathercall http://www.nci.ie/weather/ hmm does he own that netcafe there aswell?

Jackie laughlin

Daveym,
I'm not 100% sure about this. You'd need to go to the BCC website (Not the BCI.) and check their judgements. As I recall, they found that an ad concerning psychics breached the guidelines by exploiting superstition or similar. I know that one ad was forbidden; I'm not sure if these judgements are treated as precedents. If they are, RTE would be precluded.

mike65

DaveMcG wrote:

Anybody got a link to that interview Pat Kenny did with a bloke from this company? The one he got in trouble over for giving them a bollocking....

Not quite what you were looking for

http://skepdic.com/news/newsletter68.html

Mike.

copacetic

Jackie laughlin wrote:

Daveym,
I'm not 100% sure about this. You'd need to go to the BCC website (Not the BCI.) and check their judgements. As I recall, they found that an ad concerning psychics breached the guidelines by exploiting superstition or similar. I know that one ad was forbidden; I'm not sure if these judgements are treated as precedents. If they are, RTE would be precluded.

If we are talking TV ads then I remember something about the TV3 ad alright, but I think it was the wording that was the problem. Another ad with different wording might pass a complaint. As the BCC is complaint driven RTE could put an ad on if they wanted and only if there was a complaint could the BCC rule on it. It's unlikely RTE would do so, I just don't think there is anything stopping them.

Jackie laughlin

Daveym,
Are you sure about this? If you are right it would mean that an advertiser could make a slight change and continue until someone made a complaint and the BCC dealt with it!

tbh

DaveMcG wrote:

Anybody got a link to that interview Pat Kenny did with a bloke from this company? The one he got in trouble over for giving them a bollocking....

again, not exactly what you are looking for, but gives the jist.

http://www.bcc.ie/decisions_details/Mar2006/234%2005%20decision%20T%20Higgins%20Mar06.doc

copacetic

Jackie laughlin wrote:

Daveym,
Are you sure about this? If you are right it would mean that an advertiser could make a slight change and continue until someone made a complaint and the BCC dealt with it!

pretty sure, but open to being wrong too! The BCC/BCI can't stop anyone broadcasting anything in advance, nothing is run by them. They just work off complaints.

The recent trocaire issue was a bit different as today fm asked for a ruling in advance which they weren't required to. Note that RTE are doing their own thing on that.

Advertisers have made slight changes in the past to make their ads ok, as normally the decisions are based on wording/promises made in ads etc.

cold_filter

Jackie laughlin wrote:

As far as I'm aware, the BCC has ruled against such advertising and RTE would be precluded from taking up such an offer, if it were made.

RTE is not regulated by the BCC, thats why today FM, tv3 etc had to take the trocaire add off and rte still have it. Thanks the the ray d'arcy show for that nugget of knowledge!!

copacetic

cold_filter wrote:

RTE is not regulated by the BCC, thats why today FM, tv3 etc had to take the trocaire add off and rte still have it. Thanks the the ray d'arcy show for that nugget of knowledge!!

that's not quite true, currently some aspects of RTE are subject to the BCC and some not. The 'political' nature of ads is one that the RTE panel decides for for themselves, broadcast act related stuff is subject to the BCC/BCI, note the complaint upheld against Pat above..

copacetic

apparently RTE have turned him down but he is talking about taking a court case. New ad rules coming into force in may mean he can advertise on any channel by BCI rules. The rules relating to 'fortune-telling' are being relaxed.

RTE have said that under the 1960 act they can refuse any ad they want. He is saying that his legal advice is that as they are the dominant player they
can't turn down ads that have no legal prohibition.

Will be interesting to see what happens next.

flogen

copacetic wrote:

He is saying that his legal advice is that as they are the dominant player they
can't turn down ads that have no legal prohibition.

Odd - I would have thought that any publication/station could refuse to carry anything without having to give a reason (kind of like a manager having the right to refuse permission in a shop).
Maybe that could be taken differently as RTÉ are supposed to be a PSB, but I can only see that having an effect if IPL can argue that the publication of their services is in the public interest or is providing a public service.

copacetic

flogen wrote:

Odd - I would have thought that any publication/station could refuse to carry anything without having to give a reason (kind of like a manager having the right to refuse permission in a shop).
Maybe that could be taken differently as RTÉ are supposed to be a PSB, but I can only see that having an effect if IPL can argue that the publication of their services is in the public interest or is providing a public service.

would agree he wouldn't seem to have enough of a case but possibly start an action in the hope that RTE wouldn't want to risk a court case. eg RTE not running the 11890 ad was based on taste issues
which I assume is fine too.

Found a report on this in the business post:

http://www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqt=IRELAND-qqqm=news-qqqid=21955-qqqx=1.asp