Profit cheer for UTV

The group added it was on track to launch UTV Ireland in January 2015. It also owns the ITV franchise for Northern Ireland.

UTV said it expects group sales to grow 3% in the third quarter, even though it forecast TV sales would weaken in this period because some upcoming ITV network ad campaigns were not applicable in Northern Ireland. However, it does expect a pick up in TV ad sales in the final months of 2014.

UTV said: “The strong recovery in each of our advertising markets is evident in these results.”

The firm said operating profits from its TV business lifted 30% to £4.4m (€5.5m) as ad sales grew.

It said: “Encouragingly, the recovery in the Irish advertising market, which recorded steep declines in recent years, seems to be gaining traction with our Irish television advertising being up by 5%.”

UTV added it had signed key executives, agreed its broadcasting licence and commissioned additional programmes in preparation for the launch of UTV Ireland next year.

It said its target for the new channel was to become the second most watched station after RTE1.

But UTV said it expected the new project to lose between £2m and £3m (€2.5m-€3.8m) in its first year as it grew an audience and attracted advertisers.

Sales at its British radio unit rose 20% to £28.5m (€35.7m) on the back of the rising ad market.

Sales at talkSPORT lifted 33% due to the World Cup, while its international Premier League commentary service, talkSPORT International, remained in profit as it broke into 25 new markets including China, the US and Vietnam.

Earlier this month talkSPORT signed a new deal with the Premier League to extend its international commentary contract until 2019. It said the deal would give it the opportunity to develop additional broadcast, digital and sponsorship revenues.