Although I can't see anything official yet, Sky Sports rugby union presenter Rupert Cox has said on twitter that, apparently, Channel 4 has secured the UK broadcast rights to Ireland's Autumn Internationals. If that's true, it means another three Rugby Union matches being broadcast on FTA television.
Meanwhile, with the change in TV contracts for the Pro14, there’s a new look for the graphics, and it’s a massive step backwards I’m afraid. Of all the places to take inspiration, it’s coming direct from Fox Sports Australia, with an almost identical scorebar.
The Nations League begins next week - all live on Sky but interestingly highlights of Wales are on the BBC and England on ITV, so wondering if the local FAs have retained highlight rights.
I guess Virgin Media have the rights in Ireland as there are five games across the first "matchday" on VM3.
Yeah they’ve got rights to everything except Republic of Ireland games, which are on Sky. But it seems to be on a non-exclusive basis, as there’s no indication of Sky’s coverage of Germany v France being blocked.
Meanwhile, with the change in TV contracts for the Pro14, there’s a new look for the graphics, and it’s a massive step backwards I’m afraid. Of all the places to take inspiration, it’s coming direct from Fox Sports Australia, with an almost identical scorebar.
They're actually not dissimilar to the last set of gfx used by S4C before the standardised set came in two years ago.
I just want to know why are the team name sections so wide if they're only using three characters.... do they flip over for "TRY" / "PENALTY" like last year?
I’m really not a fan of the new graphics at all, though in their favour they’ve some nice animations. The team sheets in particular have a lot going on. The Premier Sports opening titles aren’t great either, with eir Sport using different titles.
As if the new look Premier Sports couldn’t make the Setanta inheritance more obvious - they are using microphone covers nearly identical to the old Setanta ones.
Eir Sport have used the opportunity to unveil new idents, which aren’t much but better than what they’ve had for about seven years - live action plays a part again for the first time since the Setanta GB days (which Setanta Ireland kept for a while before switching to the boring animations they’ve used since).
As guessed there’s going to be quite a bit of cross pollination between eir and Premier, with the latter taking the Connacht v Glasgow commentary from eir. They ran seperate wraps for both the Leinster and Connacht games (with seperate commentary too on the Leinster game). For those games, eir Sport 2/Premier Sports 1 was blocked in Ireland. Ulster v Scarlets and Dragons v Treviso however will air as full Premier Sports productions on eir Sport 2/Premier Sports 1- not sure if the full eir Sport production is airing on Premier Sports 2 for Munster v Cheetahs.
In the past, it was because they couldn’t (or rather wouldn’t) use the Setanta name in GB, now it’s because they are under different ownership, even though they still co-operate operationally (and in fact are both still played out by Setanta in Dublin).
Would they need one for an EPG slot on Virgin Media for example?
You need a broadcast licence for all broadcast platforms in the UK - cable, satellite, terrestrial. It's going to get woolly around IPTV...
(Apologies for slightly off topic)
Yes IPTV regulation is going to be an interesting one, so many blurred lines. I produced a Webinar at work recently but did it as a multi camera TV-style production using OBS streamed it to Facebook Live, having reformatted the presentation to be over the shoulder style inset graphics (John Oliver style) rather than full frame PowerPoint.
The point I'm making is that anybody can produce something that looks like TV and can be viewed on any relatively modern device that can receive TV broadcasts with just a reasonably good laptop a couple of webcams and a good mic, but it's completely unregulated.
As those boundaries blur further it will be interesting to see what happens, and how much of the regulation gets relaxed as it becomes an anachronism. The watershed may well be one of the first things to go