Manx Radio has always been a commercial station under government ownership, with some government subsidy so that they can afford to provide all the speech and news and cultural programming that they do. It's a fairly normal model in some smaller countries. The UK equivalent of LPFM is allowed to carry full advertising as well.
The Isle of Man also has two purely commercial stations which are run very cheaply with a lot of voicetracking and automation - Energy FM (CHR) and 3FM (AC). You can hear Manx (89.0) and 3FM (105.0) on a lot of the coast in North West England, Energy is tougher because it's on a more crowded bit of FM. The Manx government is separate to the UK government (they have their own .im web domain, and your phone roams if you go there!), and so the broadcast rules are different - the thing that always jars with me is sponsored news. "Energy FM news, brought to you by...". That's a huge no-no in the UK.
Even public broadcasters that charge a license fee often have commercials - RTÉ TV and radio in Ireland have some advertising on them, even though you pay €160 a year to them. The BBC is pretty unusual in having no commercials.
