The RTE News Thread

Virgin Media don't care about News, even if it provides most of its viewers outside of the soaps. We have to be grateful that there is any coverage at all today. Remember that they had no news at all from Friday evening till Monday Morning for years. How they got away with it then was they told the BAI that they station would close if they weren't allowed to drop those commitments.

Eileen Ni Choistealbha is presenting the Bank Holiday Monday bulletin of the Six-One news.

I bet the RTE newsroom today was quiet as a mouse. Most of RTE news staff would be off, as they worked "very hard" over the weekend for the president election and referendum results.

I remember one RTE news worker saying that it is like a ghost house in there some days when it is holiday time. Just a handful of staff to produce the scaled back television news on RTE 1, as RTE 2 news is non existent, and radio news is just cheap hourly summaries on Radio 1 and 2FM.

Sounding very bitter for some reason by putting very hard in quotes

She presented the One O'Clock bulletin as well.

Had she presented any English-language bulletins previously? The only other time I recall her presenting in English was when she did the local newspaper review on mid-2000s bilingual current affairs show Seachtain - and then she switched between English and Irish as appropriate (as, indeed, did Siún Nic Gearailt, the show's main presenter).

Of course, Eibhlín's an RTÉ employee too, as are all the other Nuacht TG4 presenters and reporters.

Not bitter, just annoyed at the occasional laziness of RTE News.

BBC News can take its foot off the pedal sometimes too.

Lazy ? Lazy would have been scaling back the coverage to just the evening when it's being obvious from the polls the last number of weeks it was going to be basically a landslide on both votes especially when it's a bank holiday weekend

And given it's a bank holiday monday with no scheduled Govt or Business press releases in Ireland why would there need to be a fully staffed newsroom today

I am not talking about one day, I am talking about RTE as a whole in terms of abandoning news on RTE 2, and the closure of RTE News Now which is on the cards for 2019.


Also the fact that RTE Television news does not wake up until the 1.00pm bulletin on RTE 1 is lazy. As a public service broadcaster, funded by the Irish licence fee payer, a proper breakfast news service should be provided, as an alternative to Virgin Media One.

However RTE have more concern for Morning Ireland on Radio 1, and so they abandon any idea of a morning news service on their main channel, and opt to air Euronews, teleshopping and a rerun of their previous day's afternoon show.

That is what I am trying to convey, and I am sorry if I didn't.

Now when I say lazy, yes I was a bit harsh, compared to Virgin Media One's attitude to news.

Coming at this from an outsider's perspective, it has seemed odd to me when I've been in Ireland that the biggest channel in the country goes to Euronews, then Teleshopping, then a one day old repeat of a chat show first thing in the morning. I do wonder how much it would cost them simply to simulcast Morning Ireland in the way they do on RTE News Now.

However ...
- Virgin Media is already supplying a breakfast show
- There is a limited audience for a breakfast TV show in Ireland already without splitting the market
- Teleshopping presumably helps pay for some of the other programming RTE does, it's not exactly flush with cash right now
- Does the talk show bring in higher ratings than a news show would?

Ultimately, if people in Ireland want Irish news first thing they know where to go after all this time. It's not the end of the world.

In my experience of visiting Ireland, notably Dublin, most places seem to have Sky News on at all hours. I think certainly there are those who look towards the UK for breakfast TV.

Worth remembering that UTV Ireland has local news bulletins during its Good Morning Britain simulcast. Whilst not usually more than 2/3 minutes in length it was certainly more than RTÉ.

UTV Ireland does not exist anymore and Good Morning Britain is not aired on any of the three Virgin Media channels which own them now. UTV Ireland is dead and gone.