The Dutch NPO (Netherlands Public Broadcasting) is the organization behind three of the most important television channels we have here (Nederland 1, 2 and 3), accruing a third to half of all the viewers on an average night. Even though it's public television, it gets two-thirds of its money from advertisements. Their site (Dutch) brings up some good points to justify this:

- they are less dependant on governments who at any moment or after elections could decide to cut funding

- it makes sure they have the budget to cover a wide, pluriform programming which has room for smaller minorities (for instance, there are shows aimed at muslims, Frisians, hindus).

- the points above mean that they can compete on the same level as the commercial broadcasters, not competing in profits but in viewers.

- it means that they can produce good high-quality content for relatively little money and that it can stay public. One of the features added in the last years is the ability to rewatch all shows broadcasted by the channels and to stream them live

Besides, they polled their audience and 70% said that they didn't mind ads supporting the public broadcasting. Hey, you gotta take a bathroom break some time.