TV3 Ireland to rebrand as Virgin Media Television.

The point VM themselves would make is that Saorview isn’t their primary platform, Virgin Media TV is. As it happens while TV3 is on 3/103 everywhere, 3e and Be3 are on a host of different numbers.

If this rebrand works, I'll eat a pair of socks.

And I wonder why they've chosen the last Thursday in August? It would surely make more sense to carry this out on Saturday 1st September, or on Monday 3rd. (Not that it would stand a greater chance of working, mind.)

Yes they would make that point, but if you took away their Saorview viewers there wouldn't be very many viewers left. About 10% of the population have only Saorview, which is close to half a million viewers. If they weren't available in the morning It's possible up to half of TV3's audience would just disappear. To be fair the same could be said for RTE 1 and 2. It would be very interesting to see the share of the audience TV3 have in the remaining 90% of households that can get UK and Sat stations as well as Irish stations.

Well...this is quite a mouthful and confusing. By all means change the corporate company name, but it doesn't make any sense to ditch '3' on air.

So what will happen to the recently relaunched 3News Hub and 3 News Ireland, all the money spent on the rebranding and it will be dumped for what? Virgin News?

What money? They probably saved more on the merger of TV3 News and Ireland Live than they spent on the set (which can be recoloured, so they’ll probably keep) and titles (which aren’t up to much and use a slight rearrangement of the previous music).

They re-built Studio One to become the new 3News Hub and the rebrand was to emphasise 3News, seems a bit of a waste when this will be dumped for Virgin News probably.

Curveball thought with the pay sports channel and how to fill up content.
What about Racing UK's Irish racing rights from next year?

The Irish racing fraternity were complaining that RUK can't dedicate as much time to Irish racing, as well as the coverage of UK race meetings.
Virgin Media/Eir Sport would have enough airtime to give to Irish Racing coverage during the day and evenings.

Go to RUK and sublicense at track presentation coverage.

RUK keeps Irish racing in PiP boxes at the top of the screen where there are clashes and very little race build up - the new sports channel in Ireland gives the sport full bananas, and puts UK racing in the PiP box on that side of the Irish Sea.

RUK UK, offers subscribers UK racing (that Sky Sports Racing doesn't have) and Irish racing with minimal race buildup.

RUK Ireland, offers subscribers full UK coverage and simlicasts of Irish racing.

Everyone agrees this is stupid then.

It is not just stupid, it is totally unnecessary. TV3 name has been there for 20 years and now they are going to throw it in the garbage. They are going to bring in a UK company name, not an Irish name, (yes TV3 is not exactly Gaelic I know) but it is a foreign company imposing its brand on the Irish viewer. This is a public service channel, on Saorview, not a cheap Freesat channel, which can change names and no one cares.

This would be like the British government privatising Channel 4, NBC come in and buy it, and then in 2020 we get NBC UK. There would be uproar, as Channel 4 name and brand has been part and parcel for us in the UK since 1982.

I think in most people's eyes, that equates to 'just stupid'.


The last incarnation of Virgin Media One didn't last long as they flogged it to Sky, together with the other VMTV channels, which mainly closed or got renamed.

I appreciate that Liberty Global may have a different business plan, but why are they getting back into the same game that failed for VMTV in the past? I doubt Ireland is a more lucrative venture than the UK.

I know it would never happen, but there would probably be similar uproar if Viacom announced it was rebranding Channel 5 (which has also been around for over 20 years) as a Viacom-branded channel.


There would be even more uproar if another company bought ITV and decided to rebrand it with their own name.