The Late Late Gay Byrne Irish Television Thread

I expressed my thoughts in the other thread already: I find it quite "shocking" to have the Virgin brand on the 1st commercial national operation, instead of a much more neutral and inclusive TV3 brand

So that the Irish first commercial operations becomes a "showcase" for Virgin Media.. silly, just silly

Even Sky prefers to have more neutral brands for their FTA channels (which compared to TV3 are just small "niche" channels), even in Italy with the LCN 8 TV8 channel

Particularly sad because the brand is 20 years old next year

It may not be a loved brand, but it is much better than Virgin, for sure

RTÉ One graphics in particular, remind me of old fashioned UK TV graphics

They look old-fashioned because they are old. They've been re-edited a few times but that package has been on Screen for probably 10 years at this stage. Having said that they're still better than Oneness...

Some of the current RTE One idents date back to November 2006, and at eleven years old are now extremely long in the tooth at this stage! That said all of the other presentation elements are of much more recent vintage, having debuted in January 2014.

Of course, BBC Four's idents are the same age, and BBC One's circles were as well.

The new name of TV3 is most likely to be called Virgin Media Television or VMT1, VMT2 or VMT3 etc & it will take place in the 2nd quarter of 2018. They announced the rebrand after the launch of their new Spring 2018 schedule which took place in Dublin yesterday. I don't like the new name change as it sounds long winded & a bit of a mouthful tbh.

No official word made yet about channel numbers on TV providers here with more details to come at a later date.

https://www.tv3.ie/xpose/article/news/259007/Irelands-Got-Talent-and-the-NatWest-6-Nations-lead-TV3s-new-Spring-schedule

Highlights for the new schedule includes the following shows.

Ireland's Got Talent & Ireland's Got Mór Talent.
All 15 matches of The Natwest 6 Nations Rugby (Men's tournament) to be shown exclusively on TV3.
New season of Red Rock.
New season of The Bailout.
An extra night of The Tonight Show to allow a 4 night run.

I've noticed since last week, the 5.30 news runs until 6pm, followed by a trail for the Six O'Clock Show and then the latter starting as late as 1806.

Tactic to stop viewers tuning over to the Six One?

I think Virgin Media Television is the new name of TV3 Group rather than necessarily being the name of the channels themselves. They’d be mad to call it anything longer than Virgin 1.

Won’t the channel numbers be the same as what they’ve currently got?

According to someone on Boards.ie, TV3 group have registered domains for Virgin TV One, Two and Three. Uninspired but not unexpected names if they turn out to be what they new names are. But surely that will cause confusion for people who see Virgin TV 3 and think that is the new name for TV 3 but it isn't, it's the 2nd sister channel showing a load of rubbish (what TV 3 is usually anyway!)

Whatever it will be, it will not be “VMT1”. “VMT” isn’t their brand, “Virgin Media” is. It would render the exercise - the point of which is to create a branding connection between the cable company and the broadcaster - utterly pointless.

“Virgin 1” or “Virgin Media 1”, I would almost certainly say.

You could end up with IRISHness.

I wonder if TV3 becomes Virgin Media 1 for example then will TG4 rename?

The numbering is going to be a bit odd

RTE1
RTE2
VM1 (for example)
TG4

Weird.