Irish General Election Coverage

I realize there is already a thread re RTE on BBC Parliament, so I've started this thread with the aim of covering all channels.

For RTE, this election will mean it's biggest and longest election coverage. Starting at 11am this morning, we're threated to almost non-stop coverage until 2am and throughout the weekend. TV3 are only showing bulletins, TG4 have substantial coverage in Irish, nothing on channel 6 as expected.

France24 and Euronews have been including coverage all day in their packages. Has anyone heard Sky or BBC covering the same? It's a shame that Sky New Ireland is no more as it would have been interesting to see how they would cover it.

In the mean time, the count down is on, can't wait to see what "set" they've build over on RTE at 11am!

Would anyone care to provide one or two captures for the poor person who's stuck in college vaguely attempting to study, but whose university network won't frig ging well let me connect to videos on RTE.ie.

EDIT: How on earth is frig ging considered a swear word on this site? Jesus!

EDIT: Ah, now it's working, never mind!

The opening titles where nice, but the studio is just a re-hash of the prime time one. So dark and purple. Nice virtual room graphics. Hopefully it will get better.

Interestingly, there seem to be a lot of people in black T-shirts wandering around the back of the studio handing out sheets of information to the guests. It's weird looking.

But as for the studio set itself, yes same old same old, dark purple and screens around a round desk.

Yes, very purple! Graphics are rather nice though, animating astons. Miriam O'Callaghan anchoring at present. No charts as of yet, we probably won't see any until first counts come in around 2pm.

Will be spending most of the listening to the radio coverage though rather than TV. Although it doesn't officialy begin until midday, Pat Kenny is devoting his show to it. RTÉ really have deployed everyone on this one, Adrian Eames who is a sports reporter was reporting on the Waterford count!

Already based on exit polls and tallies, Paddy Power is paying out on Bertie staying Taoiseach!

Nice animated graphics! I likes!

Yes it has to be said, seeing them in all their slidy action they are quite lovely, the name strap even moves up or down from one line to another to take account if there's another strap beneath it.

Kind of begs the question why RTE can give us all this pretty stuff but then the output from the news studio, in terms of colour, design and animation is dull, to say the least.

For those who have no access to RTE channels, there are some examples of the graphics and studio presentation here: RTE General Election Coverage.

Generally I like it. Nice and slick and they're live everywhere. Very few presentation feck-ups for such a momentus production.

TG4's a bit bland - was to be expected and least they're making the effort. The ability to draw on RTÉ's resources is a major advantage for them obviously, indeed they've got in there first on a couple of occasions while RTÉ One's on a break.

An unusual error on TG4 - a program was called up which appeared in the form of a Microsoft 'Window' and covered up a part of the screen momentarily. It was during a feed from Donegal, and no, it wasn't Solitaire

As for the guy handing out notes... They did that during the Northern Assembly elections as well and I was hoping they'd work out something else this time. Of course, just as BBC Parliament picked up the coverage, he was seen quite a few times in the space of a minute - at one point clearly seen rearranging pages in the background.

During the Six-One, David Davin-Power was analysing from the RTÉ Results Centre. At least one person could be seen in the background on the phone using one hand, waving like crazy using the other. A bit unprofessional.

Other than that it's been pretty impressive. Very good online coverage as well. Plenty of graphics to hand and they're not being over-used, not being under-used. Were they designed in-house I wonder?

Why can't RTE always be like this. The set is flawless, and so is the production. Were stuck with a sh*** set.

Like a mix of the Late Late [background] and Prime Time

It looked pretty gloomy IMO during the daytime. It would be like broadcasting the One News from the Prime Time studio - it just didn't work.