RTÉ News

Did anyone see Jenny McCudden's report on 3 from the train station? It was from Limerick I think. She was standing on the bridge, just finishing her PTC, and just after she finished with the details, the train which was pulling into the station gave a little hoot! It was right in the middle of the gap before her sign-off - it couldn't have been planned or anything, but it was timing was perfect!

I caught the end of Six-One, nothing major from what I saw, but why couldn't someone point out to David McCullough that his tie was a bit off to the side? As for the weather, John Eagleton is the only one of the Met Éireann staff I don't like, so I was delighted to see him get his provinces mixed up. There was a tinge of feedback at the start as well.

Do any of the RTE/Met Eireann presenters speak Irish?

I can imagine Nuala Carey having a PERFECT Connemara Gaeltacht accent...

Or RTE could poach one of the girls... or Daithi... from TG4.

Or perhaps TG4 provide more than enough weather forecasts (almost one on the hour but they are more thorough and more regional than RTE's) to negate the need for RTE to do the same.

Well the only forecast I've seen in Irish on RTE was during the Nuacht, and then they just showed a static map with symbols as Siuin read a summary.

Maybe some of the TG4 presenters would liven up RTE Weather. Now all we have is :

"Good evening *CLICK* <Map appears> <long silence> Today saw mild conditions in the south and south west <silence> *CLICK* <silence> It will remain moderate *CLICK*..." etc etc

The weather forecasts would be more interesting if they just showed charts without presenters as a filler. I want to know what the weather will be like tomorrow morning - not how wet the soil was last month!

For the record, Nuala Carey has the WORST irish accent of anyone in RTE. She's recently been seen doing the pointless programme Telly Bingo and occassionally fills in for Ronan Collins on the Lotto draws, Saturday and Wednesdays.

Until last week (when she was obviously corrected) her Irish translations for the numbers was improved. In the past she used to say "triocha - is - a - sé' for the number 36. The 'is -a' part in the middle is typical of someone who read Irish in a book and never spoke to another Irish person. The correct string is "triocha-sé" and this has been corrected.

On another note, I'm not surprised that Nuacht RTÉ is losing its whistles. RTÉ have long since proven their contempt for the Irish language by consistently producing lame programming from their D4 base (an area of Dublin where the language is almost completely disregarded as a peasant tongue). In 1997 the nail in the coffin for RTÉ and Gaeilge was firmly driven when the station shipped its irish programming onto TnaG (Teilifís na Gaeilge, now called TG4 for some reason).

Since then RTÉ has bothered less and less with programming in Irish. Nuacht RTÉ has a poor news slot, bad coverage of events and a clearly skeleton crew on board. If anything, the SixOne should be bi-lingual and so should the Nine.

But I guess when a few miles up the road in D2 the Dáil and Seanad, our national parliamentary houses, Gaeilge is more scarce than ever before. The only Irish you hear there is when Members of Parliament refer to the Speaker of the House as 'Ceann Comhairle', most getting the pronounciation of that simple title wrong.

P.S. Anyone catch the priceless moment for John Eagleton on tonight's Six Weather? He walked out past the screen before the summary. Amazing feck ups in and out of the news room.

AND WHERE ARE THE NEW IDENTS???

I saw that. That's John Eagelton for you! Scroll to 1:54

As for the Irish language, I remember watching an epsiode of Hanging With Hector a few years ago, the one with Bertie. They began talking away in Irish. I had Aertel subtitles on for no particular reason, as I do from time to time. Of course insteading of going to the "bother" of doing their job and providing a transcript of the dialogue, all viewers got was [CONVERSATION IN IRISH]. If the programme was live, that would be bad. But since it wasn't, it's just inexcusable

Yes Diarmy, I thought Miss Carey was saying "fiche is a cuig" etc. when I saw her hosting Lotto (probably under duress) last October or November - I've never heard anyone adding the "is" to numbers in Irish but never thought of questioning it.

I'm more used to hearing "tree-ha" instead of "truch-a" for thirty in Irish as well...

The background is shimmering on Nine at the moment.

Knowing the way RTE and cock-ups go so well together
that probley means something is wrong

While it might not be of revelance to people in cities and towns it is useful information for the farming community and while farming still makes up a fair part of the economy we're going to hear information like that.

Agreed - if anything this is one of the most interesting and worthy aspect of wether forcasts. Irish weather predication isn't exactly rocket science, so features like this add interest and variety to weather bulletins.

But dear oh dear, I saw John live too - what a disaster.
Saying that, he was right to do what he did, I would have done the same, only he should have exited screen left - not trundled the whole way across! Hilarious to see his geeky smile quickly dissolving, and to hear his heavy breathing off camera

Anyone watching Bertie's interview yesterday evening? Six One's biggest broadcast of the year, with a much-coveted interview, half the country watching, and what happens? - the interview VT jams for three seconds on the first frame . It simply beggars belief. One could just hear the collective sigh of dinner tables around the country, shaking their heads in dismay.

And in an increasingly Skyesque style of presentation, RTÉ emblazoned an EXCLUSIVE aston across the screen for no less than a minute and a half at the start of the interview! What a farce - it was as embarrassing as it was distracting, nearly as bad as Radio 1's hyperventilating build-up to he interview over the course of the afternoon.

Similarly the background chosen was horribly garish, with a giant blood red wall filling half the screen, and the framing overly leaning in favour of 16:9 rather than 14:9, creating a nasty expanse of nothingness in shot. At least the lighting was natural, and lapel mics discreet, though the audio was poor. Hard to resolve in such a large room though.
Dobson excellent as ever: probing and meticulous, yet discreet, sensitive and courteous.

Since the RTE thread is dead, WHERE ARE THE IDENTS? Are they even going to use them? After the BBC one idents by red bee, I have more confidence that they will be good, but still!

Surely, WORLD EXCLUSIVE, Non?