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!
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.
I'd suggest that there are a lot more watching Channel 5 in Ireland than most of us think, There's a reason it's still listed in most TV Guides and Newspapers in Ireland. (Including the RTE Guide.)
It's also the case that there are about 40% of homes at this stage that don't have traditional paid TV in Ireland, of those about 8% only have Saorview. Now this figure is growing every day, there's less and less reason to pay SKY for their TV package when all the main UK stations are free to air off satellite or Freeview and all the ones that might have tempted people onto the SKY platform seem to have gone free to air in recent years (Dave, Sky Arts, etc)
I know a lot of these people and most of them have UK
EPG's on their TV's (using a Belfast postcode) or Sky boxes. Some top-up their SKY viewing with half-price deals from NOW TV, None of these people watch VMTV. They will turn over to the Saorview box for RTE Stuff, but they're not watching VMTV. The main reason being the picture quality is awful It's a lot worse than SD on the main Satellite Stations.
Before the current situation, I would visit elderly relatives in Nursing Homes, you'd often see ITV on the TV's in the Sitting rooms.
It would be interesting to see if Saorview was turned off for a month and then we looked at viewing figures for Irish stations. I would think that with the exception of RTE1, the rest would lose more than 2/3's of their audience immediately. When you look at the figures the 8% of Saorview only homes could be providing more than half of all regular Irish TV viewers.
I can actually see how they would be happy to get rid of VMTV at this point, it will be nothing but a drain on finances for decades to come if they hold onto it. It's an easy win for someone in Corporate, Increase profits by just getting rid of the TV stations.
