The Late Late Gay Byrne Irish Television Thread

Surprised they haven't opted to show The Jeremy Kyle Show at 9.25am either.

Sorry, should have clarified that it's seemingly with TV3. Nothing official but being reported by the Racing Post and some other sources. Contradictory reports as to whether the deal is with ITV or RMG or both.

Someone I know is a contractor to Racing Media Group, and he says it's a done deal with TV3, due to be announced today or tomorrow.

If RTE have existing details I suspect it'll be for allmeetings not covered by RTE. If the rights have expired all bets are off really.

RTE's contract runs parallel with Channel 4's, so is up at the same time.

Announcement from RMG this afternoon - includes Aintree and Cheltenham, which were the last GB festivals which RTE were covering:

http://www.racecoursemediagroup.com/news/tv3-secures-4-year-uk-horseracing-deal-with-rmg/

Disadvantage here for Irish Racing Fans is that 3e is not in HD and most of the 50 meetings are on 3e. Having said that there are positives. It returns UK racing coverage on Irish terrestrial TV close to the Glory days of the 80's when there was UK racing on at least once a week, and full coverage of all the big meetings. There's also the huge advantage of them taking ITV coverage rather than providing their own. They'll only be able to take breaks when ITV take breaks, so it should mean 3 or 4 less minutes of advertising an hour.

Saturday afternoons on RTE1 in the 80's was very much about racing. Sports Stadium could have up to 10 or more races in an afternoon as they often took racing both from ITV and the BBC and also covered Irish racing.

Interesting news announced yesterday.

The news editor of UTV Ireland Mick McCaffery has been appointed Head of 3 News Ireland at TV3.

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/media-and-marketing/tv3-appoints-mick-mccaffrey-as-head-of-news-1.2915690

EDIT: Also that article above has 3e switched to e3.

Perhaps he knows something we don't and 3e is changing its name as well

Schedule now out for the first week of be3 - the News at 10 stays, with the second bulletin moved to 7pm.

Daytime is now:
7am Kids shows
10am Xpose
10.30 Ireland AM
12.30pm Loose Women
1.30 Judge Judy
2.30 Soap repeats
4.00 Dickensons Real Deal
5.00 Guess Whos Doing the Dishes

Seems to be repeats of reality shows at 6pm, standard ITV content in primetime (the stuff TV3 doesn't want!), then soap repeats and reruns of Elaine and Loose Women after the News at 10.


The biggest loser in all this seems to be The Chase, which moves from 6pm on UTV Ireland to 1pm on TV3, while Tipping Point and Judge Rinder air 5-7pm on 3e. GMB and Lorraine are also axed.

Makes sense for them to drop Good Morning Britain and, by extension, Lorraine. These were only really there to serve audiences who missed UTV NI.

So out of curiosity, how does this leave reception of British channels in Ireland? I take it there isn't an ITV as such, although some border regions can receive UTV NI, Channel 4 is still there but Channel 5 isn't?

UTV NI, is still on "Other Channels" on Sky. Always has been. It's unlikely that the other TV providers, Virgin, Eir and Vodafone, will put UTV back as between the 3 TV3 channels most of ITV's popular stuff is there anyway.