The Late Late Gay Byrne Irish Television Thread

On the eve of the digital switchover on the island of Ireland, I've decided we need to talk about Irish television.

If anyone is tired by the offering of UK channels, I can't recommend strongly enough trying out the RTE Player. All homegrown shows are available to watch on demand and usually streamed live, The Late Late Show and The Saturday Night Show which is basically The Late Late Show on a Saturday with a different presenter and a bit shorter. Lots of our favourite stars can be seen on those shows, William Roache was on The Saturday Night Show the other week.

The Late Late Show lasts for two hours on a Friday night, it's really something to enjoy if you miss Friday Night with Jonathan Ross.

Telly legend Gay Bryne, who I consider something of an Irish Terry Wogan, the former host of The Late Late Show now has a series interviewing celebrities on 'The Meaning of Life'. Terry Wogan himself has featured on that show.

Anyway in his latest programme he's interviewed former Oasis band member Noel Gallagher.
http://www.rte.ie/player/gb/show/10064899/

Other Gay facts,

Gay was the first person to introduce the Beatles in vision on TV when working at Granada and perhaps something that will fill him with greater pride is that fact he also introduced the world to a beta edition of Boyzone.

Surprised this piece of Gay news hasn't been mentioned before.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2140217/Facebook-pulls-Gaybos-page-fear-fake-Social-media-site-demanded-ID-star-putting-page-up.html

This thread is nothing without pictures:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eELsC-jp8Jg/TkgYbM7aK_I/AAAAAAAACJA/GhLs9zRGpRQ/s1600/GayByrne.jpg

Don't you just love the irony of that!

Can all RTE Player programmes be accessed from the UK? Not that I particularly care (fair payback for all the BBC/UTV/HTV piggybacking that half the island did for a long time) but I would be a bit mortified to think of rest of the worldly people watching Winning Streak or Fairly Sh*tty .

Also as of yesterday, TV3 content is available in the UK/US and Canada via the 3 Player app on the Roku box. And yes RTE international is the version of RTE Player you get outside of Ireland, both online and via the player apps for iOS etc.

Technically RTE Player isn't, RTE International is however. If you want RTE Player you might need to find an Irish Proxy.

So does this mean since viewers will get RTE in NI, will they be able to access the RTE Player online from NI?

Isn't that what he said?

RTE Player International, is basically everything RTE produces itself without rights restricted sports content (although some Sport remains) and imports.

When I went to Ireland earlier in the year, I noticed RTE don't show the end cap on EastEnders, although the logo does appear on the titles. Is this some kind of petty tribal thing that they simply want to hide the fact they're showing a BBC product as best they can?

Aye maybe available on Roku Box, but that costs a small fortune.

Could it be to hide the "EastEnders is repeated on BBC Three at 10pm"?

Hadn't thought of that, although it could be delivered that way. You'd think it would have one of the BBC World end caps really.

RTE News have a short news special from 9:55IST to mark the switch over. It's available worldwide via rte.ie/live

Whilst Aertel will discontinue, Digital Aertel will launch on cable and saorview tomorrow (officially) however, it will continue to broadcast in analogue on Sky (for now).

They just switched off Analogue with a click of the mouse and in the RTÉ transmission room all 4 channels went off at once.