IT seems there is no prospect of a peace settlement between Daily Ireland and the Irish News, who have been involved in a spat over their circulation figures. The Irish News is complaining bitterly that the Andersonstown News Group, publishers of Daily Ireland, boosted its sales figures by bundling its daily and weekly titles together when publicising its performance.

Daily Ireland is spinning furiously, claiming that breaking the Audit Bureau of Circulation’s embargo on announcing sales figures was its only blunder. “It was a case of going off before the gun was fired,” said Colin O’Carroll, the deputy editor of Daily Ireland, presumably using an athletics analogy rather than a paramilitary one.

The ABC upheld the Irish News complaint and chided the Andersonstown crew for including uncertified sales figures for Lá and South Belfast News alongside audited figures for Daily Ireland, North Belfast News and Andersonstown News to reach its claimed circulation level for all group titles.

Daily Ireland’s circulation of 10,467 still stands, but the publisher expects this figure to rise in the next round of ABC figures, saying sales were up 20% in the wake of the recent IRA announcement confirming its commitment to decommissioning. Sources at the Irish News argue otherwise, saying its competitor’s sales have been slipping steadily since its launch. Looks like another job for Senator George Mitchell.

Lost finds its UK audience

Despite respectable viewing figures for Lost on RTE2 over the past 13 weeks, Montrose execs could be forgiven for succumbing to envy last Wednesday as the plane crash drama received its UK premiere on Channel 4. On the back of a huge £1m-plus marketing push and helped by being sandwiched around a Big Brother eviction, the double episode of Lost achieved record ratings for an American import on Channel 4.

More than 6m viewers, or 27% of the available audience, watched the first episode and the second attracted 5.9m, a 30% audience share, beating all its competitors in both slots. Over in America, an average of 17m viewers a week were glued to the series.

On RTE, the show has had an average audience share of 22.2%, equating to 283,000 viewers a week. That trails the impressive performance of Desperate Housewives, which pulled in 314,000 or 25.5% audience share on average, but far surpasses Joey, which washed out with an average of just 12.2% or 167,000 viewers.

Both Lost and Desperate Housewives featured in the launch of RTE’s autumn schedule last week. Alas, there was no mention of the second series of Joey, which is currently running on NBC stateside.

House Hunters mag for live-abroad set

Joining the phalanx of overseas property magazines on the shelves is a new monthly spin-off from RTE’s House Hunters in the Sun show. The magazine will be co-published by RTE and Blendon Communications and edited by Blendon’s editorial director, Rupert Bates.

Blendon will be hoping that the new magazine can emulate the success of its House Hunters in the Sun exhibition, which pulled in more than 7,000 foreign property hunters last March, rather than flopping as spectacularly as its other overseas property show, Viva España, which attracted fewer than 1,000 visitors in May.

New look ESB to back GAA minors

As part of a continuing move to overhaul its sponsorship activities, the ESB is to back the minor GAA championships in both football and hurling at a cost of about €500,000. Reflecting its pervasive presence throughout the country, the ESB had a sprawling sponsorship portfolio of about 25 separate deals, but has slimmed that number down to four: the minor championships; the Irish women’s hockey team; the Rehab People of the Year awards and the Beo/Ceol music festival.

In addition to a cost of €500,000, the minor championship sponsorship will be supported by further advertising.

“It’s a perfect fit,” said Eoghan O’Neachtain, ESB’s head of public affairs. “The ESB is in every community in Ireland and so is the GAA. There are a lot of synergies between the two organisations.”

The ESB chief executive, Padraig McManus, rather laboured those synergies by pointing out that the ESB was founded the year before the GAA introduced the under-18 category to its sports. Not very finger on the pulse, considering those two events happened in the late 1920s.