The Late Late Gay Byrne Irish Television Thread

If I were a betting person my money would be on this to fail and another relaunch at some point within the next few years. That could be anything from 6 months to 6 years. There are always some companies with more resources than sense and this lot seem to be one of them.

They'd be far better off evolving the current brand, giving each station a clear focus. I get the oddest feeling that the huge amount of repeats of repeats and blocks of 4 and 5 hours of the Chase and tipping point will return within months (if they disappear at all)

RTE2 becoming Network 2 was genius in 1988. Up to that point, RTE2 was a backwater of a channel that was hardly watched in multi-Channel homes. Switching Kids and Sports to the Channel grew the audience and presentation improved greatly. It also allowed RTE1 to have programmes aimed at adults between 4 and 6, At that time the only real competition for that audience was Channel 4, BBC1 and ITV had kids programmes and Neighbours/Home and away.

It also marked the start of a time in the station when presentation improved. I remember talking to someone that had to represent RTE at EBU meetings saying that the 1989 News presentation was the first time he wasn't embarrassed by what RTE were producing in their News studio. Many times in the 80's their presentation looked like something from the early 1960's.

RTE2’s 1988 relaunch was indeed a roaring success. It came at a cost which wasn’t appreciated at the time or for some years. People of a certain age, among Network 2’s target audience, forgot that Network 2 actually was run by RTE. Ditto with 2FM. They restored corporate branding, very lightly, in 1995 only to drop it again with the “N2” relaunch in 1997 (the one which came with endcaps claiming every programme was an “N2 Production” or “Presentation”.

The end result was that RTE was stuck in a space where it was actively disassociating itself from its own second channel while at the same time trying to say to people “But look at all you get for your license fee”. Ultimately a circle they couldn’t square. And ultimately the name was changed back to RTE2.

RTE had a problem with RTE 2 past, as the Irish public knew very well why it was originally launched in 1978. To provide BBC, ITV, later Channel 4, US and Australian shows to the Irish public who could not receive multi-channel (meaning the UK channels).


By the mid 1980s the channel was truly dreadful. It started out with a promise to "bring you the best of BBC, ITV and other first rate programming", however from 1981 it suffered the worst budget cuts ever imposed on RTE, with the channel nearly closed down.

The schedule was also very limited. By 1985 RTE 2 was only on the air for around 6 hours a day, usually 5.30pm until 11.30pm. By the mid 1980s, the Irish public were able to receive BBC1, BBC2, ITV and Channel 4 either via spill over signal from Northern Ireland or Wales, cable television or UHF deflector transmitters. So RTE 2 in its original form became redundant.

This was the reason why Network 2 launch was really needed by 1988. Shame that a decade later all the good work would be undone with the dreadful N2 era.

Something tells me that this whole "VM Television" rebrand will be a massive failure, both money wise and identity wise.

You're being generous there with the 5.30pm start time for RTE 2. It was often 6.00 or later. Summertime RTE 1 in the mid 80's often didn't come on air until 5.15 (5.30 on Wednesdays) and was off air as quickly as possible after 11.25pm. at the start of the 80's about 60% of the country could get UK TV, by the end of the 80's it was close to 90%, is it any wonder that as soon as you could access UK TV you'd watch that instead of Testcard 1 or Testcard 2.

I think the point was perhaps missed: the schedule changes and investment brought about in the rebrand of RTE2 to Network 2 were of course welcome and badly needed. And let’s not kid ourselves either that the RTE corporate logo of the time was a design classic - they removed it from RTE1 at the same time and it was barely seen on air again for the seven further years it lasted.

But by removing the RTE name from the station, for most of sixteen years (bar a two year period there was a barely visible RTE logo on the idents), RTE did a stellar job of convincing a large part of an entire generation of young people that Network 2 was in fact a privately run commercial station. That had ramifications when RTE found itself moving from an environment where the only competitors were U.K. terrestrial channels (whom other than UTV and then only after Brum Henderson left, didn’t think of RTE as a competitor at all) to a multichannel environment with a large home grown competitor and a multitude of U.K. channels selling advertising in Ireland. It became a problem when people began to ask “why am I paying my license fee” and RTE suddenly remembered that Network 2 (and 2FM) were part of RTE again.

One thing I've always wondered: how much RTÉ were inspired by BBC2 when creating the 1988 Network 2 ident. Or was it just a huge coincidence that it had more or less the same colour scheme and barely acknowledged the third dimension?

http://i64.tinypic.com/w9jkol.jpg http://i67.tinypic.com/i37w4g.jpg

I was seven when I first saw the "classical element" idents, on one of my visits from London to my grandparents in County Kildare - and these idents made such an impression that, even now, I think it's a real shame they only lasted two years. (Mind you, Carlton's colourful light-based idents from around the same period also made a big impression on me, and they didn't even last 15 months...)






I'm sure, though, that RTÉ had a good reason for aiming the channel a bit younger in 1997.

Back to TV3 rebranding... Will a petition against Virgin Media signed many people work in this case? If that doesn't work, "R.I.P." to the short lived idents.

Cable television must have been a Godsend for many in the republic? I remember a friend of mine in Limerick use to nickname the RTE channels as "Bosco One and Two".

I remember our family planning to visit Cork in 1991. We would be staying in a cottage in Douglas area. We were worried as we wanted to have multi-channel and we phoned the owner, and she said do not worry, we have multi-channel. When we got there, they had a better signal of the UK channels than we did back in our home town in the UK. They had crystal clear BBC One, BBC Two, UTV and Channel 4 - whilst back home, in our own city, we have a reasonable BBC One and Two, ITV was tolerable, and Channel 4 was the weakest signal, watchable, but weakest signal.

When visiting various parts of Cork in the 80's you would find that in some houses would have terrible reception of RTE1 and 2 but the UK Stations would be crystal clear. The local community rebeaming effort was providing a better signal that the State broadcaster. there were places in the west that were technically illegally rebeaming TV3 for a good few years when there was no legal way to get the TV3 signal.

Too late for a petition now, I think.

To be honest, I don't think a petition would achieve much anyway. You get petitions about the most frivolous things: a TV-related one that I remember called for the BBC to restore the balloon idents...