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The RTE News Thread

Discussion about RTE News (August 2016)

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CH
chinamug
Stop sitting on the fence and tell us what you really think!

Thing is though, is breakfast a real priority for RTE Television?
Looking at the latest radio listening figures published last week, most radio stations put in some serious numbers of pairs of ears in the weekday morning drive slot - so faced with that - is a tightly budget controlled public service tv broadcaster really going to spend 4-5 million euro on developing and then producing their own breakfast programme, when most of the available audience is either on TV3, or (where viewable) Good Morning Britain, BBC Breakfast and Sky News or it seems, the multitude of radio stations available in all parts of the country.

Plus, if we are talking about finance - the 45 min block of 'commercial paid presentation' programming at 7am, must bring in a few more cents into the RTE piggybank than a blank screen or testcard would do.

I don't know it this 'abmomoly' still goes on these days, but I seem to remember that you had RTE One and TG4 both putting out Euronews at the same time. Could never quite see the point in that. Yes, if the TG4 one was dubbing the soundtrack into Gaelic, but they weren't.

One wonders what would happen if a major news story of Irish importance breaks before 7am?
Would RTE switch to domestic studio/location presenter led news coverage, or patch across RTE News Now (and therefore the Morning Ireland studio 'snoop' cameras) over to RTE One, and let the radio news team do the coverage, until normal programming resumes?


Breakfast has never been a priority. The audience before 8am is very, very small. Ireland AM just about breaks even but it's basically product placement for 3 hours and most of it's audience appears after 8.30am.

At one point Euronews seemed to be everywhere at 7am where for a short time It was on RTE 1, RTE2 and TG4. However, TG4 made the clever move of rebroadcasting France 24 overnight. You can still see Euronews on RTE1, RTE2 and RTE News Now at about 5.30am for around an hour.

Usually, if there's something very important Happening A TV News special will be broadcast but the Starting time for that is usually 8am. It's possible the next one of these will be the morning after the UK general election. The last time I remember RTE TV news being on overnight outside of elections was for the Gulf War in 1991. They had hourly headlines for a few nights and rebroadcast CNN the rest of the time.

Just to add that RTE did use the 1984 Olympics to do a test run of Breakfast TV. They had a Morning programme with a mixture of Olympics, plus News, Sport and features from around Ireland. Between costs and low viewing figures at the time they dropped the idea after the trial 2 weeks. At that time they were so cash strapped they hadn't sent an entry to the eurovision the previous year and they were thinking of closing RTE2 during the week or for a few months over the summer.
Last edited by chinamug on 30 April 2017 5:13pm
WW
WW Update

Breakfast has never been a priority. The audience before 8am is very, very small. Ireland AM just about breaks even but it's basically product placement for 3 hours and most of it's audience appears after 8.30am.


I'm not familiar with the Irish workday, but wouldn't most potential viewers be at work or heading to work by 8:30?
MA
Markymark

Breakfast has never been a priority. The audience before 8am is very, very small. Ireland AM just about breaks even but it's basically product placement for 3 hours and most of it's audience appears after 8.30am.


I'm not familiar with the Irish workday, but wouldn't most potential viewers be at work or heading to work by 8:30?


When I saw it a few years ago, it was more of a 'Daytime TV' style fluff show, rather than news.

In fact 08:30 is when BBC Breakfast goes all fuffy, and Lorraine starts on ITV
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WW
WW Update
Do British morning shows enjoy significant ratings in Ireland?
CH
chinamug

Breakfast has never been a priority. The audience before 8am is very, very small. Ireland AM just about breaks even but it's basically product placement for 3 hours and most of it's audience appears after 8.30am.


I'm not familiar with the Irish workday, but wouldn't most potential viewers be at work or heading to work by 8:30?


When I saw it a few years ago, it was more of a 'Daytime TV' style fluff show, rather than news.

In fact 08:30 is when BBC Breakfast goes all fuffy, and Lorraine starts on ITV


The Irish workday appears to start about the same time as the UK one, in urban areas anyway. The audience that start to tune in at 8.30 would be the parents at home, the old, the unemployed and students. Not exactly an advertiser's dream.

It is fluff on TV3 at that time, but they corner the market for fluff I suppose.

Do British morning shows enjoy significant ratings in Ireland?


They had basically 100% of the Market until 1999 when Ireland AM came along and probably held the vast majority of it until recently. Overall in a broadcast Day UK stations have a 55% market share in Ireland (it's closer to 65% when you include those watching ITV programmes on TV3 stations) and the mornings appear to be no different except you can't Watch Good Morning Britain or Lorraine as TV3 have decided not to show them (they would damage the Ireland AM brand). ITV is not widely available in Dublin anymore as Virgin don't Carry UTV at this time.

Obviously, if you've a Satellite Dish (which over 60% of households in Ireland have) you can still tune into ITV for those shows,

TV3 in 2013 claimed it had a 25% of the audience which was 50,000 viewers for Morning TV, (since then it's gone up to 36%) but that's still only 200,000 viewers overall for the whole Irish Breakfast TV audience.
Last edited by chinamug on 30 April 2017 8:23pm
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NE
newsman1

I'm not familiar with the Irish workday, but wouldn't most potential viewers be at work or heading to work by 8:30?


When I saw it a few years ago, it was more of a 'Daytime TV' style fluff show, rather than news.

In fact 08:30 is when BBC Breakfast goes all fuffy, and Lorraine starts on ITV


The Irish workday appears to start about the same time as the UK one, in urban areas anyway. The audience that start to tune in at 8.30 would be the parents at home, the old, the unemployed and students. Not exactly an advertiser's dream.

It is fluff on TV3 at that time, but they corner the market for fluff I suppose.

Do British morning shows enjoy significant ratings in Ireland?


They had basically 100% of the Market until 1999 when Ireland AM came along and probably held the vast majority of it until recently. Overall in a broadcast Day UK stations have a 55% market share in Ireland (it's closer to 65% when you include those watching ITV programmes on TV3 stations) and the mornings appear to be no different except you can't Watch Good Morning Britain or Lorraine as TV3 have decided not to show them (they would damage the Ireland AM brand). ITV is not widely available in Dublin anymore as Virgin don't Carry UTV at this time.

Obviously, if you've a Satellite Dish (which over 60% of households in Ireland have) you can still tune into ITV for those shows,

TV3 in 2013 claimed it had a 25% of the audience which was 50,000 viewers for Morning TV, (since then it's gone up to 36%) but that's still only 200,000 viewers overall for the whole Irish Breakfast TV audience.


....or you get terrestrial overspill from Northern Ireland, Wales or the west coast of England, of course.
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CH
chinamug

When I saw it a few years ago, it was more of a 'Daytime TV' style fluff show, rather than news.

In fact 08:30 is when BBC Breakfast goes all fuffy, and Lorraine starts on ITV


The Irish workday appears to start about the same time as the UK one, in urban areas anyway. The audience that start to tune in at 8.30 would be the parents at home, the old, the unemployed and students. Not exactly an advertiser's dream.

It is fluff on TV3 at that time, but they corner the market for fluff I suppose.

Do British morning shows enjoy significant ratings in Ireland?


They had basically 100% of the Market until 1999 when Ireland AM came along and probably held the vast majority of it until recently. Overall in a broadcast Day UK stations have a 55% market share in Ireland (it's closer to 65% when you include those watching ITV programmes on TV3 stations) and the mornings appear to be no different except you can't Watch Good Morning Britain or Lorraine as TV3 have decided not to show them (they would damage the Ireland AM brand). ITV is not widely available in Dublin anymore as Virgin don't Carry UTV at this time.

Obviously, if you've a Satellite Dish (which over 60% of households in Ireland have) you can still tune into ITV for those shows,

TV3 in 2013 claimed it had a 25% of the audience which was 50,000 viewers for Morning TV, (since then it's gone up to 36%) but that's still only 200,000 viewers overall for the whole Irish Breakfast TV audience.


....or you get terrestrial overspill from Northern Ireland, Wales or the west coast of England, of course.


100 percent correct. Thumbs up
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BK
bkman1990
I suppose that the TV news audience in Ireland is going to become even more fragmented than ever because of TV3 having extra news bulletins coming into their schedules on be3 & the return of their weekend bulletins which are coming back very soon. I would not forget the inclusion of Nuacht TG4 from Galway for their TV news bulletins either btw.

RTE's viewer numbers for their weekend bulletins may take a hit if TV3 have them back immediately.

Are the RTE News viewer numbers still in a strong position after TV3 expanded their news schedules after UTV Ireland closed down?
Last edited by bkman1990 on 30 April 2017 11:49pm
CH
chinamug
I suppose that the TV news audience in Ireland is going to become even more fragmented than ever because of TV3 having extra news bulletins coming into their schedules on be3 & the return of their weekend bulletins which are coming back very soon. I would not forget the inclusion of Nuacht TG4 from Galway for their TV news bulletins either btw.

RTE's viewer numbers for their weekend bulletins may take a hit if TV3 have them back immediately.

Are the RTE News viewer numbers still in a strong position after TV3 expanded their news schedules after UTV Ireland closed down?


When the bulletins were on TV3 before on Saturdays and Sundays it had no real impact on RTE News numbers. TV3 News at 5.30 is easily their most successful show and was the most-watched show on the channel most days during the dark two years when they didn't have the soaps. However it's a very different news to the Six-One, there's room for both in the market, and I would think that many who watch at 5.30 on TV3 then turn over to Six-One.

There are very few people watching Nuacht TG4 no matter how good or bad that service is.
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BK
bkman1990
I have to agree with you regarding Nuacht TG4 because it is mainly a news bulletin mainly focused on people who reside in Gaeltacht areas or the Irish language in a mainstream setting. I was watching Friday's bulletin before the Leinster vs Edinburgh Pro 12 match from the RDS; the top story on that bulletin was some issue relating to Irish being taught in schools or whatever.

Nuacht TG4's specialist news output in Irish is much like BBC An Lá in Scotland and S4C's news bulletin from Wales. They are only there to fit a certain Public Service remit from regulators to provide news bulletins for people who speak those languages. If a person was seen to be depending on these services to get hard hitting news like foreign news stories like the US, Syria or whatever; they could have been very disappointed because these bulletins are not set-up like mainstream bulletins like RTE News or BBC News.
RD
rdd Founding member
You can't really have a discussion about breakfast TV in Ireland, and on RTE in particular without mentioning Morning Ireland: it's RTE's flagship and the most listened to programme on Irish radio. RTE are quite proud of that latter fact and are I believe not keen to do anything that might sabotage it - hence the "late breakfast" news show (Morning Edition) that they attempted for a short period only starting at 9am.

One thing to note about TG4 news, although I don't watch it, they have always been adamant that their remit is to be Telefis na Gaelige(Irish language television), not Telefis na Gaeltachta, but I guess they need to look at where their viewers are.
LX
lxflyer
The previous poster has hit the nail on the head.

Morning Ireland dominates the morning schedules in Ireland and in addition to RTE Radio 1 is also on the RTE News Now channel - that's where the majority of people get their morning news from in Ireland.

There is a very small market for breakfast TV in Ireland being honest about it - Sky News, BBC Breakfast on BBC One, and BBC World News provide suitable alternatives to the TV3 output.

The notion that TV3 bringing back weekend bulletins would hit RTE is fanciful - they haven't really made any significant inroads to RTE News audiences.

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