Last night's Late Late show was, well....
Basically because of the Red Alert weather warning in place for for Dublin, it was decided not to allow a regular studio audience. And there were very little guests available. So some obscure Country and western singer, a comedienne who is on Strictly Come Dancing With The Stars, people who are involved with the response to the storm, a couple off the street and a live link up to a nearby wedding filled the show for the two hours. Personally I think the reason it had to go ahead instead of putting on a film is the viewer competition is probably a major source of income to RTÉ. It was enquired of RTÉ under a freedom of information request just how much they make off these competitions and it was refused due to putting RTÉ at a competitive disadvantage. Hmmmmm
Last night's Late Late show was, well....
Basically because of the Red Alert weather warning in place for for Dublin, it was decided not to allow a regular studio audience. And there were very little guests available. So some obscure Country and western singer, a comedienne who is on Strictly Come Dancing With The Stars, people who are involved with the response to the storm, a couple off the street and a live link up to a nearby wedding filled the show for the two hours. Personally I think the reason it had to go ahead instead of putting on a film is the viewer competition is probably a major source of income to RTÉ. It was enquired of RTÉ under a freedom of information request just how much they make off these competitions and it was refused due to putting RTÉ at a competitive disadvantage. Hmmmmm
You're right, It's one of the few Shows RTE makes that's a cash cow. Most other popular shows just about break even or make a loss. Had it not gone out last night it would easily be 1/4 million euro thrown in the bin. It's one of the reasons that Tubbs can justify his salary, overall he does bring a fortune into the station. Having said that you could have several other people hosting and figures might not change. On top of that I would assume that ratings for the show will be very high as Most people were stuck indoors and Graham Norton wasn't on BBC 1 last night.
A best of The Late Late wouldn't have worked as Advertisers would have looked for a huge discount and they probably wouldn't have run the VERY important Phone Competition.
I love the civil service speak here - "business priorities" - and deferred means "not going to happen". Virgin Media do not want to admit that the whole rebranding idea was stupid and they probably have had some feedback and market research which has told then the majority of the people in the Irish republic along with advertisers would rather keep the name TV3, 3E and be3 as the number 3 is so part of the company, that to change it would be business disaster, so instead of saying they are dumping the idea, they have gone all Sir Humphrey Appleby and used deferred to mean they will never rebrand.
I love the civil service speak here - "business priorities" - and deferred means "not going to happen". Virgin Media do not want to admit that the whole rebranding idea was stupid and they probably have had some feedback and market research which has told then the majority of the people in the Irish republic along with advertisers would rather keep the name TV3, 3E and be3 as the number 3 is so part of the company, that to change it would be business disaster, so instead of saying they are dumping the idea, they have gone all Sir Humphrey Appleby and used deferred to mean they will never rebrand.
I agree with this. I'm probably not surprised about this news because I never envisaged this happening in reality within a really fast timeline. I think TV3 have gone ahead of themselves when they were talking about this rebrand. Going from the IT article; it feels that the respondents in the market research on this plan probably felt it was rushed with no credible back up plans if it did fail because Virgin were initially planning to do this when they bought TV3 off Doughty Hanson a few years ago. But they may have decided that this rebrand was not going to be successful if it was going turn out to be equal or worse than Virgin 1 in the UK in the long term.
When I talk about the viewers in the process; I think the suggestion that it could have happened so fast is irrelevant to them because they were probably fed up of going through another phase of rebranding that could yet again affect their chances to continue watching their programmes with another seemingly permanent plan of action. What happens if Virgin decide to rebrand their channels again to improve their viewer numbers while leaving viewers to change the process of trying to watch or record their favourite programmes all over again from scratch? It sounds like all hell will break loose when this happens to them.
This rebrand leaves a lot of commercial risk rotting in Virgin's hands if this rebrand was a monumental disaster right from the beginning. I think it was right for them to call a halt because it may give viewers with a bit of breathing space to try to watch their programmes within a relative period of peace from an non Irish TV owner.
Virgin Media have not been given a whole lot of praise from their customers while they began operating their business in The Republic of Ireland. Some of their business decisions like the implementation of Virgin Mobile in Ireland & the removal of Eir & BT pack from their cable package have apparently left a lot of deserved backlash from their customers & viewers to date. It feels like they have done the right thing in delaying the rebrand or sweep it under the carpet to prevent more backlash from the masses.
Last edited by bkman1990 on 9 March 2018 2:47am - 2 times in total
I love the civil service speak here - "business priorities" - and deferred means "not going to happen". Virgin Media do not want to admit that the whole rebranding idea was stupid and they probably have had some feedback and market research which has told then the majority of the people in the Irish republic along with advertisers would rather keep the name TV3, 3E and be3 as the number 3 is so part of the company, that to change it would be business disaster, so instead of saying they are dumping the idea, they have gone all Sir Humphrey Appleby and used deferred to mean they will never rebrand.
I agree with this. I'm probably not surprised about this news because I never envisaged this happening in reality within a really fast timeline. I think TV3 have gone ahead of themselves when they were talking about this rebrand. Going from the IT article; it feels that the respondents in the market research on this plan probably felt it was rushed with no credible back up plans if it did fail because Virgin were initially planning to do this when they bought TV3 off Doughty Hanson a few years ago. But they may have decided that this rebrand was not going to be successful if it was going turn out to be equal or worse than Virgin 1 in the UK in the long term.
When I talk about the viewers in the process; I think the suggestion that it could have happened so fast is irrelevant to them because they were probably fed up of going through another phase of rebranding that could yet again affect their chances to continue watching their programmes with another seemingly permanent plan of action. What happens if Virgin decide to rebrand their channels again to improve their viewer numbers while leaving viewers to change the process of trying to watch or record their favourite programmes all over again from scratch? It sounds like all hell will break loose when this happens to them.
This rebrand leaves a lot of commercial risk rotting in Virgin's hands if this rebrand was a monumental disaster right from the beginning. I think it was right for them to call a halt because it may give viewers with a bit of breathing space to try to watch their programmes within a relative period of peace from an non Irish TV owner.
Virgin Media have not been given a whole lot of praise from their customers while they began operating their business in The Republic of Ireland. Some of their business decisions like the implementation of Virgin Mobile in Ireland & the removal of Eir & BT pack from their cable package have apparently left a lot of deserved backlash from their customers & viewers to date. It feels like they have done the right thing in delaying the rebrand or sweep it under the carpet to prevent more backlash from the masses.
You also have to remember that in the Irish republic, access to the British channels are very easy. TV3 has to compete with ITV for ratings, and yes on the EPG on Sky in Ireland there is no ITV channels, but Sky customers can add these channels in and watch all of the ITV channels, taking away viewers from TV3, 3E etc. Also Freesat is easily available there too, one of the advantages of Ireland being so close to the UK, sharing the same satellite footprint. Virgin Media who own the cable network in Ireland know this, and know the branding of TV3 since it launched in 1998 is something Irish viewers are used to and are happy with. It would be like Channel 4 rebranding itself a totally different name, which would cause uproar in the UK. Virgin know that in the Irish republic people have a lot more access to the UK channels, remember Ireland had cable television way before the UK< starting in the late 1960s to bring the British channels to viewers in the Irish republic, starting off in Dublin.
remember Ireland had cable television way before the UK< starting in the late 1960s to bring the British channels to viewers in the Irish republic, starting off in Dublin.
Couldn't many viewers in the Republic receive BBC NI and Ulster TV when Telefís Éireann began in 1961 (with some viewers in Dublin and the south-east also being able to receive BBC Wales and TWW)?