Shareholders in Ulster Television were told at today's Annual General Meeting that the company's "aggressive" television strategy had resulted in it having "signficantly outperformed" its ITV peers by increasing its share of ITV network advertising revenue.

The comments were made by UTV's chairman, John McGuckian, who related an upbeat trading update to his audience:

"'Moving into 2004, a continuing feature of UTV's progress is outperformance. Our net television advertising revenue in the first six months of the current year is expected to increase by 16% compared to 3.5% for ITV as a whole, with the Irish marketplace performing particularly well throughout the period and the European soccer championship fuelling additional demand in June."

McGuckian cautioned that "the advertising market is still relatively short term," but added, "our continuing strong performance in Ireland provides positive indications for the year as a whole."