The Late Late Gay Byrne Irish Television Thread

Being reported here:

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/tv-radio/tv3-in-turmoil-as-all-staff-offered-voluntary-redundancy-30151860.html

Not much more they can cut from their news operation, apart from maybe The 12:45. Wonder what this "strategy for 2014" entails.

So TV3 has lost its ITV contract to UTV. And now it's GAA to Sky Sports. And I'd imagine UTV have enough muscle to fight for some of TV3's other sports rights such as the Champions League.

If TV3 are planning on continuing by producing 'homegrown content' plus whatever imports they can hang on to, I still think it'll be difficult for them to survive in such a relatively small mainstream market, when you'll already have RTE One/Two, UTV Ireland and, to a certain extent, TG4.

RTE One HD was added to Eircom's Evision service as well but customers need to pay an extra €5 a month on their current package to receive it.

https://www.eircom.net/tv/channels#footertext

What does TV3 have bar news?

They show lots of ITV shows, but the agreement only includes ITV Studios programming. The likes of X-Factor, Britain's Got Talent etc. which do well on TV3 won't be on UTV Ireland.

Well, depending on the contract and terms - UTV Ireland might just hoover them up too.

I'm pretty sure TV3 have secured the The X Factor, BGT etc rights since losing the ITV Studios deal.

Emmerdale and Coronation Street are the only two main 'big shows' which would impact on their schedule. There's lots of daytime stuff such as Jeremy Kyle, The Chase and Come Dine With Me which will probably disappear from TV3 - but uncertain if they'll re-appear on UTV Ireland.

Other big shows which they show that aren't ITV Studios would be Take Me Out, All Star Family Fortunes and The Cube. UTV Ireland may well try and acquire them, but they're not guaranteed with the deal.

Its odd that should be the case, as both Sky and UPC make RTÉ's (and in UPC's case, TG4, BBC, and UTV) HD channels available to those without their HD pack. In UPC's case that was only after some initial complaints about having to pay extra for public service channels, though.



In terms of in-house productions, mostly a string of chat shows - Ireland AM, a breakfast show which goes on until nearly 11am, Midday, which is a bit like Loose Women, and Late Lunch Live, nothing to do with the old Mel and Sue vehicle, but rather Martin King's morning chatshow relocated to the afternoon. What's left after that tends to be short "documentary" series which are quite sensationalist. Their sports rights are now limited to one more season of Tuesday Champions League and first pick Europa League games, though rumour has it they are going to go for the limited A-listed games in the Rugby World Cup that they did back in 2007.

I've notice there also do a few Ch4 programmes.

They can probably shorten the news at 5;30 by 15 minutes. By right the BAI would step in and stop such an action, but the BAI didn't stop them from dropping News at the weekends. They have only one bulletin of about 2 minutes On Saturday and Sunday and the last time I looked No Weather Forecast at all. (obviously it's hard to know for certain as you miss the news if you blink!) If I didn't know better I'd think that they were winding down the station.

In the past few months they lost the rights to the Soaps (a huge blow) All ITV studio's programmes and the GAA matches.

A huge Problem is that they continue to broadcast in SD when Everyone else has moved to HD. Their Picture on Saorview is terrible. I get the impression that if they had been in HD they might have held onto the GAA rights.

Do tv3 not have their own copy of the episode since the auditions are pre-recorded?

Even if they did, wouldn't it be embargoed?