The Late Late Gay Byrne Irish Television Thread

If we take British channels in a narrow sense to mean the traditional five terrestrials, the situation on cable is that BBC One NI, BBC Two Ni (and on Virgin Media at least, BBC Two England HD) and Channel 4 are provided. UTV NI has not been provided by any large cable provider since 1st January 2015 and Channel 5 was never provided.

On the Sky EPG the situation is similar except that S4C is also provided and that BBC One HD is England instead of NI. (But SD is NI). UTV NI was never on the Sky EPG, nor Channel 5, but of course any FTA channel receivable in the U.K. can be manually tuned.

Practically all UK stations are available to about 60 percent of the population via Freeview or Satellite. (either sky or free to view) A lot of people that could get BBC and ITV off the air changed to Satellite over the past few years as the reception was a lot better. You'd find that those that have TV3 or UTV Ireland only on Saorview SD will watch the ITV programme on ITV or UTV in HD on Satellite.

Cable has some restrictions as earlier posts have gone into. However, less than 10% of houses in the republic only have Irish Stations, and that's mostly out of choice or awkward landlords. UK TV has a 55% percent share of Irish Viewers and if take into account all the TV3/UTV Ireland programmes from ITV and Eastenders on RTE, it's almost certainly over 65% percent.

Channel 5 was never big in Ireland as it launched a lot later than the other 4. Oddly enough it was the easiest UK station to get if you were in the West or South West of the country as it was on Satellite from Day 1, if memory is correct. I remember seeing in houses in Kerry before 2000.

Channel 5 didn't even launch on satellite in the UK until a few weeks after its initial launch.

I didn't get Channel 5 full stop when my parents only had analogue at the time...

As I said if memory is correct, which it appears not to be. Just to add that Channel 5 was rebroadcast in the Limerick area for a good few years (Not entirely sure how legal that was )

There were several such "deflector" (effectively pirate retransmissions of U.K. TV) systems in Ireland - they were legalised in 1999 following the election of a government dependent on the support of an independent TD who was elected on the single issue of getting them legalised. Most of them did not carry Channel 5 however. The regulator licensed them somewhat reluctantly and with the express condition that they were to go away once DTT started (but that kept getting postponed).

The one in Limerick was somewhat unique in that it was associated with the former ILR station in the area who had the dubious distinction of being the only commercial radio station ever to lose its contract mid-franchise. They continued on air as a pirate station and used their Channel 5 transmission to air a pirate TV station, which was most certainly not the intention of the deflector licenses which were expressly only allowed to retransmit and not originate content,

That's right. C5 launched the end of March 97, I think it was around June it appeared on Astra 19E ?
I was in a bar in Montreux in June, and remember an England football match being shown in there in C5.
If only the other four channels were available on satellite I thought (there wasn't too long to wait !)

There did used to be a video on YouTube of the launch of C5 on satellite, it was the same as the original Spice Girls intro but the voiceover at the start said something like "Good evening and welcome to Channel 5 on satellite".

Ireland Live at 5.30 becomes News at 7 when UTV Ireland becomes Be3 on 9 January. No mention of who's presenting.

Also of note TV3's Seven O Clock Show has become The Six O'Clock Show, moving an hour earlier. Xpose gets the old TV3 News at 8pm slot.

No change to 3e's news service. The Thread continues to air at 1458, 1558, 1658 and 2058.

I found this online today. It's a new billboard advertisement for the rebranded TV3 channels.

http://imgur.com/a/w3cJQ

Not for BBC and Channel 4 anyway. Took a while for ITV to launch on Sky.