The Late Late Gay Byrne Irish Television Thread

The sale hasn't closed yet, accordingly to the TV3 statement today.

Despite everything that they've said about a "three channel business", I simply cannot see it continuing that way in the long to medium term. UTV Ireland's only significant crowd pullers are Emmerdale and Corrie. As of Monday week they are gone. The news service will surely follow (who is going to run two completely separate news services in this day and age). And once they're gone, what has UTV Ireland got left? An ITV daytime schedule comprising mostly programmes competing directly against TV3's own shows.

How well does the ITV daytime schedule rate in Ireland? Would they consider keeping the live shows eg Lorraine, This Morning, Loose Women?

I would imagine that'll remain on "UTV Ireland" unless it's deemed to damage TV3's own daytime programming. Even if it does though presumably they have the rights under the deal so makes little sense to spend money on other filler material.

Unsure of the ratings, but they seem to have started to repeat Lorraine in the aftrenoons.

It's hard to imagine what will fill the void on UTV Ireland...? It was mentioned they might go for an ITV branded/joint venture service. An ITV daytime line up with an ITV2 peak time line up could potentially work, but not guaranteeable.

The soaps moving at short notice will cause a scheduling nightmare for Champions League coverage surely...? Football to 3e or UTV on those times when they clash?

The problem is that they're straight up against very similar TV3 formats - Ireland AM v GMB/Lorraine and Midday v Loose Women in particular. I can also see the Six/Seven O'Clock Show being booted back to daytime (if it isn't cancelled altogeher) to allow Xpose resume its 6:00pm space which it is vacating from Thursday. I don't think Xpose will perform well in the later slot, but its useful filler that I don't think they'll axe.

whats going to happen to Red Rock? sulry that should be kept just to keep TV3 look good, plus if the BBC picking it up for series 2, its recouping money.

If TV3 were smart, I would move some of the ITV daytime shows to TV3 like the gameshows, so have 3pm - 6pm, while moving Judge Juddy to 2pm, unless there want Judy Rinder?

I don't know if moving Judge Judy would be the right choice, It's been one of TV3's strongest performers since The soaps left. In fact last Thursday's Episode Beat Pat Kennys Wednesday night Prime time show. (Pat with 73,000 and Judge Judy with 74,000)

TV3 have the Tuesday night games so soaps shouldn't cause a problem, and the last match this year is the 6th.

Will be interesting to see if TV3 News at 8 remains as other than Thursdays that is in a soap free slot. They could air Emmerdale at 8.30pm but then ITV keep adding extra Corrie in that slot, and at the moment I would bet on the 6th episode going there rather than Sunday. Moving the 8pm bulletin to UTV Ireland though would solve that problem and keep some news content on UTV with very minimal effort.



I'm sure someone said it's being retooled as an hour long show so it'll find a place in the schedules easily enough I'd have thought.


I do think it's worth noting TV3 keep selling the acquisition as them becoming a "three channel" operation rather than it purely being a rebrand, so with that in mind I think with 3e being younger trending it would make sense for whatever UTV Ireland becomes to aim for the older audience, so effectively become their ITV3.

Are ITV2, ITV3 and ITV4 available (officially) in the ROI?

Only on Virgin Media, though I'm not sure how long that will last now.

ITV2, 3 and 4 are available on Virgin Ireland, at least, but ITV4 can't broadcast sports programming in Ireland due to rights restrictions.

Edit: didn't realise rdd beat me to it!

TV3 have already said they haven't bought the ITV daytime line up with the sale of UTV Ireland so the live shows will disappear. I'm sure that was already discussed in this thread.

And we've already discussed the reasons why they won't be closing this third channel down. It's the same reason ITV, C4 and C5 have multiple digital channels: to make profit from cheap archive and keep their percentage of the viewing share as high as possible so they can make their portfolio as attractive to advertisers as possible. They're not going to throw that away.

Have they? First I heard of it - it was as far as I was aware, a comprehensive ten year deal for ITV produced programming. There was no suggestion that it was limited to a particular class of ITV produced programming.

http://www.virginmedia.com/corporate/media-centre/press-releases/virgin-media-to-acquire-utv-ireland.html