The executive vice-president of a big Hollywood studio, Bruce Tuchman, tells Emmet Oliver that movies are one of the US's greatest exports.

Which American export has seduced the Irish consumer the most over the past century? Coca Cola? The golden arches of McDonald's? The shopping mall? The mass-produced motor car?

All of them have certainly changed Ireland, but the American movie industry has arguably managed to exert the most powerful cultural influence on Irish people.

That is the view of Bruce Tuchman, executive vice-president of MGM Networks. However, he hopes it is more than a cultural influence.

In Dublin to announce a new deal between NTL Ireland and MGM (better known as Metro Goldwyn Mayer), Tuchman hopes that Irish and European consumers do not lose their love for American movies any time soon.

While the value of the deal with NTL Ireland has not been disclosed, the arrival into Ireland of MGM is a significant development. The MGM Movie Channel will not - at least initially - accept Irish advertising, but its inclusion in NTL's basic digital package suggests that the cable company believes that it can help to bolster subscription numbers.

NTL's digital package, including the MGM Movie Channel, is available from this week at a cost of €29.50 a month.

MGM has true global dimensions and, under Tuchman's direction, it is available in 120 countries.

Tuchman, a lawyer by training who has spent time working at Nickelodeon and MTV, is confident NTL's optimism will prove correct.

"One of the greatest exports of America has been movies, even more than our sports.

"We love our baseball, but we have not succeeded in our baseball export business as we have in our movie business.

"Movies continue to be the one piece of American production that sells really well everywhere - and continues to sell, decade after decade.

"We have been around for 81 years as a studio. The international market has, for many decades now, just been really solid and continues to be," he explains.

But American movies are no longer confined to cinemas. They are moving into your living room and onto your television set, even the old ones.

Tuchman says that digital television has allowed American studios to export their back catalogues.

He is reluctant to call this a revolution, and prefers the phrase "paradigm shift".

"The effect of digital is the biggest paradigm shift or transformation element in our industry. The tactical thing is how quick it will take for the conversion.

"In some countries, digital has been introduced, but it's been a real slow switch. In some countries, like here or the UK, it's been much quicker.

"Digital is changing the game," he says.

He says it's not just the number of channels allowed by digital, but also the number of devices which are compatible with digital technology.

"In Korea, for instance, they've just awarded licences for mobile digital television. No wires. You are basically going to have these little devices you can walk around with and get a bunch of channels on, so it's more and more platforms, but suited to people's tastes and conveniences. That will represent the evolution of digital.

"The first phase is just to get digital TV and then there will be a lot interesting things that stem from that," he predicts.

The MGM Movie Channel is ostensibly a channel consisting of classic movies culled from the MGM catalogue. The studio boasts the largest modern movie library in the world.

"We are not trying to go out and say 'this is going to be latest great blockbuster film coming out of Hollywood'.

"This is a chance for anyone, at a reasonable price point, to access a good diversity of films, and the revenue driver is subscription revenue," says Tuchman.

The service will not be carrying any Irish advertising, probably because the market is so small and the bigger players such as RTÉ and TV3 are already deeply embedded.

His attitude to the old subscription versus advertising revenue argument is a simple one. "Subscription, particularly at the initial stages of a market, tends to be more important."

Trying to grow revenue in a small but fragmented market like the Republic is not really a problem, says Tuchman.

"It presents a challenge, but it also presents an opportunity. You can really pinpoint and know you are getting to a precise demographic with a niche audience. It is very clear that advertisers can get an idea of who is watching this channel," he claims.

Ultimately, he believes that the technology needs the content more than the content needs the technology.

"Appetite is growing generally for television and audio visual content. Consumers want better quality and more flexibility and that is what digital promises.

"Consumers ultimately are not buying the technology so that they have wires in their houses. They want good content."

With more than 4,000 films in the MGM library, Tuchman believes his firm has enough content to go around, even with so many digital options.

"There are few things that are better to watch in digital quality than movies. We love to see our movies distributed digitally.

"We started observing that digital was taking off quickly in Ireland. We looked around the world and Ireland really is one of the fastest-growing digital countries," he says.

He says that about half of US homes are digital at this point, but he is impressed with the progress here and claims that the NTL deal was hard to resist.

"We were very happy and had a very quick meeting of minds. They are clearly market leaders in digital cable."

Asked would he work with media groups in future in the Republic, he says: "We will explore other distribution opportunities. This is just the beginning."