Virgin Media Ireland to sell its TV stake?

They are HD on Sky, eir, and Vodafone.

Saorview is an issue, but essentially the problem there is a rate card that makes it uneconomical for anyone but the ultimate owner of Saorview to put their channels in HD.

They could always revert to the 2017 3, 3e and be3 presentation. Those idents only lasted a year and a half before they rebranded to Virgin.

It may or may not be the case that the rate card makes it uneconomical, (depends on what side you talk to). TV3 never tried that hard to change the situation. Until Digital Switchover about 15% of the country couldn't get it because they wouldn't pay for smaller fill-in transmitters so it has form for this sort of thing. It currently suits Virgin Media's cable television operation not to have a good picture on Saorview.

TV3/Virgin Media has always been a Dublin focused Station, it doesn't seem to care too much about anyone outside the capital. That was one of the refreshing things about UTV Ireland. It's News service covered stories from around the country, unlike TV3 news at the time which covered Dublin and one press release story from Cork. To be fair they have gotten better but it's still not great.

I’d buy that narrative more if VMTV HD was indeed exclusive to VM cable. It’s not. The channels are HD on every other platform except Saorview. If they really wanted to use HD channel supply to bolster VM over other platforms they wouldn’t license the HD versions at all. And TG4 are the exact same. HD on every platform except Saorview. Because 2rn and Comreg have made it uneconomical to go HD on Saorview. Bear in mind that every penny VMTV pay Saorview ultimately goes into the hands of their biggest FTA commercial television competitor, RTÉ.

Here’s a complaint from TG4 (not about HD, but the Saorview tarrif model in general). They don’t own a network and are completely platform neutral in this regard.

https://www.independent.ie/business/media/saorview-pricing-model-is-restricting-range-of-tv-channels-says-tg4-37965344.html

No surprise at all - I don't think any of us thought when they renamed the channels as Virgin Media 1/2/3 it would be for the long term, and in many ways was foolish as surely makes it more difficult to sell than a suite of TV3 channels.

I agree with others I doubt ITV would be interested (buying channels is not their business plan) but they'll be a bit of interest I suspect - wouldn't rule out Discovery for example.

Whatever happens, ITV will clearly remain the channels primary content supplier going into the medium term - they are half way through a ten year deal. It’ll be interesting if ITV seek to renew that deal which is probably one of the main reasons keeping Britbox out of the Irish market (which is beginning to become a source of consternation among some as many classic BBC programmes, and including massive hits like Doctor Who, are becoming virtually unavailable to stream here as the BBC will no longer do deals with Netflix or Prime Video). No doubt however if the price is right they will do a deal though.

Meanwhile though, that deal basically prevents a new owner putting any more than a cosmetic stamp on the channel. Whoever buys it, be it Vodafone or Hutchinson or a broadcasters or someone we haven’t thought of will be buying a business utterly joined at the hip to ITV for at least the next five years. They may rebrand it, whether back to TV3 or a new brand, but that won’t be doing any more than putting a fresh lick of paint on a product that will essentially be the same.

Irish viewers do have a greater access to many of the main UK channels compared to elsewhere in the world. BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Four, CBBC, Cbeebies, Channel 4, E4, More4 and Film4 are all available on the Irish Sky TV EPG platform, with all other BBC, ITV, Channel 5 free channels able to be tuned in. The cable Virgin Media also provide these, along with Vodafone and Eir TV - no where else in the world are this amount of access to UK channels on platforms.

Not quite nowhere else. We discussed recently about Switzerland which has all of the above and Channel 5 too, which isn’t available in Ireland. And some domestic U.K. channels are available in Belgium and Holland.

Channel 5 is available in Ireland, via satellite to be more precise!

But only off the EPG. Swiss cable operators give all the main UK channels slots on their EPG. But they are doing it without the broadcaster's approval.

That is true. But free to air satellite users are a minority, if a bigger one than was the case some time ago. It’s not available on any pay TV platform. If you’ve Sky, you can use manual tuning, but I count 23 button presses (on Sky Q) to get to the channel selection screen alone! And you can’t record. In other words you’d want to really want to watch the particular programme on to go to that trouble. Last programme I watched via manual tuning was Quiz on ITV, which is a good while ago.

Ok we're ruling out ITV buying, but what about STV buying it?