Following my previous post on the reduction of on street advertising, you could forgive France’s ad men feeling a bit sorry for themselves. But they’ll have even worse after Nicolas Sarkozy’s announcement on Tuesday, that the state-run France Televisions ( channels France 2, 3, 4,5 and O which serves the overseas colonies) will cease to host advertising, to become purely funded by taxes.

This brings to an end a 20-year period of uneasy balance between licence fees and advertising, and rather lump the additional cost onto the taxpayer, the funds will be raised by through higher taxes for commercial stations, and what has been promised as a “minute” tax on telephone and broadband connections.

Despite causing shares to dip for the two leading commercial stations, TF1 and M6, it seems hard, from the outside to see any losers in this:

• The public will finally get to watch TV without the lengthy ad breaks between shows -and better yet, not pay any extra for the privilege

• France Televisions – which happens to be run by a close pal of the president – will be free to concentrate on quality programming rather than ratings winners that satisfy the commercial backers

• The commercial operators – including the smaller digital channels – will be able to get a larger slice of the advertising pie, with the 20% of all TV ad revenue now up for grabs.