The Late Late Gay Byrne Irish Television Thread

RTE's staple entertainment programme in many homes across the Republic of Ireland for over 25 years being provided by The National Lottery, Winning Streak, is to finish it's programming by the end of 2014.

It's last episode will be shown on RTE One on Saturday the 27th of December.

After that, the show will be replaced with a new Lottery game show called Million Euro Challenge which will begin on RTE One at 8pm on Saturday the 10th of January 2015. The details and rules of the new show are given here from The National Lottery's website in Dublin.

https://www.lottery.ie/en/Games/Game-Info/How-to-play-Scratchcards/Million-Euro-Challenge

No surprise there - with Camelot taking over the National Lottery franchise in Ireland this week everything is changing.

Are you sure it's not a temporary replacement with Winning Streak staying in the Autumn / Winter schedule? They used to do the same a while back with summer replacements etc.

Plus, RTE woudln't realistically drop "Europe's longest running gameshow" without some papers catching it. Plus, it was always planned to run until December anyway.

http://www.rte.ie/tv/programmes/winningstreak.html

The new season of Winning Streak will run for 18 weeks until 27 December 2014. National Lottery good causes benefit from the sale of all National Lottery games, with one third of all sales (approx) going to fund Beneficiary projects around the country, as designated by Government.

In what way?
I play the lotto over there (when on holiday) and over here (via my friendly bookmakers) I like the way you can play the same numbers in three different draws format.

Hope that stops, although I have the feeling that Lotto+1 and +2 may be replaced with a mis-named raffle and a Thunderball variant very soon,if Camelot are running the show now.

Well at the moment it's the move over to a completely new technology platform that's happening this week. But it makes sense that changes to the TV offering would be happening too. There's no news of changes to the main Lotto draw format though. They haven't taken it over to run it the exact same way the Post Office have for the past 25 years (though the Post Office remains a minority partner).

Some implication (and only implication, mind you) that the show will be back at a future date in the last paragraph of this article:

http://www.herald.ie/entertainment/tv-radio/marty-whelan-were-touchy-feely-at-home-30796666.html

It surprises me that in 25 years of running Winning Streak and various summer filler shows. No one thought to incorperate the Lotto draws into the program

I'm not sure why that's the case. God knows there's enough filler in it, incorporating the draw could reduce some of it. I don't watch regularly but last time I did I think about a third of the entire run time of the show was spent on meeting the contestants (and I use that term loosely given that because it is a National Lottery show, the games must all be pure games of chance).

The Herald reports that while Winning Streak will indeed return, it will be summer filler from now on. Surely the end is nigh?

http://www.herald.ie/news/former-westlife-star-nicky-to-front-new-lottery-game-show-30812852.html

RTÉ One launched its 2014 Christmas presentation on Saturday 13th December. Two Christmas idents have been introduced incorporating scenes from the original 2006 and four 2008 idents. The 2008 Carol Singing idents have now been merged with the 2006 Christmas ident. Only one of the two O’Connell Street Christmas has been retained and all sparkle effects have been removed. Note both idents only use the 2008 Carol singing soundtrack. New miscellaneous presentation including festive trailer graphics and stings were introduced.

Images from Presentation Archive
http://www.presentationarchive.com/rteonechristmas2014/spire-f.jpg
http://www.presentationarchive.com/rteonechristmas2014/carol-f.jpg

RTÉ Two Christmas 2014 Presentation
http://www.presentationarchive.com/rte2christmas/one-b.jpg
http://www.presentationarchive.com/rte2christmas/two-f.jpg

Seems TV3 has has another new look applied today to coincide with the launch of their new drama. I haven't seen it yet but apparently it's not that great...

3e's rebrand hasn't happened yet but was supposed to happen at the same time.