22nd of July is early. At least there's still a bulletin at 1, it disappeared entirely the first year or two it was on (if my memory is correct) Back in the 80's the bulletins were shortened for 3 months and more, Newsnight used to disappear off of RTE 2 for months as well. After all, there was no international news between June and August.
RTE One must love "Reeling in the Years" programme they made. The programme is their go to filler for the Six-One News every day during the summer cut back season.
6.30pm - You can nearly 100% guarantee Reeling in the Years will air throughout August. So instead of world news and national news, we get archive RTE clips of events edited together for a specific year, with no narrator, just on screen captions.
Interesting they don't cut back Morning Ireland on RTE Radio 1 during the summer or their News at One. Someone once said radio still takes precedence over television in terms of news coverage on RTE, and to be honest, I think they are right.
Also, do Virgin Media One and Two cut back their news programming over the same summer season?
It was me who said that radio is more viewed as more important here in Ireland, and the numbers don’t argue with that being honest. Morning Ireland wipes the floor with everyone. Radio is also cheaper and easier to produce than tv - a telephone interview is simple.
You’ve got to remember a number of things:
1) RTÉ News budget is constantly under pressure and they need to save money
2) The Dáil is now in recess and the courts will rose shortly
3) RTÉ doesn’t have the numbers of correspondents that the BBC does and that does impact on them in terms of cover during the main annual leave period and they certainly don’t have the range of international corespondents to provide stories.
Realistically you’re losing the longer interview, the regional roundup and probably two full reports in the 6:01.
Virgin Media only do half-hour evening bulletins - that’s still doable.
