The Late Late Gay Byrne Irish Television Thread

I just read from a post on Boards.ie that the schedules for VM2 & VM3 from the 30th of August are not looking good at all.

Here is a summary of what I've just read. It doesn't make for pretty reading especially if anyone was a Irish VM TV subscriber.

VM2

3 hours of Jeremy Kyle,
3 hours of Tipping Point,
2 hours of The Chase,
2 repeats of Emmerdale and Coronation Street,
2 episodes of Graham Norton and Steve Wilkos.

VM3

4 episodes of Babushka,
2 episodes each of Judge Rinder, Jeremy Kyle USA, Poirot, Doc Martin, Prime Suspect US, Heathrow doc.

The soaps have moved over to VM2 and Late News at 10pm. VM3 keeps the Kids shows.

VM2 has Celeb Big Brother, while VM3 has Celeb Big Brother BOTS.

VM1 stays the same, with Judge Judy back on that day. New series of The Tonight Show is up with documentaries like David McWiliams' Back To The Future and Ireland's Deadliest Feud. News at 8 moves Emmerdale to 8:30.

The news bulletins are just like the generic names from 3 News Ireland.

The 10pm bulletin on VM2 is called Late News. VM1 just says News At 12.30, News At 5.30 and News At 8.

I take it Elaine, The Six O'Clock Show and Xpose have been kept?

Then you don't understand the quite vaild concept of cross-continental brand marketing.
Why produce the same product in several countries and advertise them as the unique names in each country - when you can call the exact same product with the same name (providing it doesn't mean something else dodgy in any of those countries) and save hundreds of the thousands in packaging and advertising.

Use the same visuals, over dub in that countries language and away you go. Time, money and effort saved in one 'hit'. It's Snickers wherever you go, it's Starburst where ever you go.
These products are still flying off the shelves. It's only the cloth-eyed little Englanders stuck in the 1970's who refuse to call them by their 'new' names, for fear of realising that they've grown up, and the world has moved on.

It’s worth realising as well that some brands in other countries changed to the UK brand with most people here noticing. For example, in continental Europe, Raider became Twix.

There’s an article here which explains it:

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/international-brand-names

See also this Wikipedia page:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_renamed_products

I’m not sure that’s a valid comparison in this case; it might have been for the original rebrand of UPC to Virgin Media. But Virgin Media doesn’t currently have a content business in the U.K. that these channels are being rebranded to match.

This isn’t about marketing one product with the same name internationally. What this is about is using the content business to cross-sell the carriage business - associating two not necessarily related products under the one brand. So TV3 already runs promos for Virgin Media On Demand, but this can be ramped up with both products under the one name. The new Sport channel, though badly missing any actually exclusive content, will be similarly promoted. During the Super Cup claims that Virgin Media Television will be the exclusive home of the Champions League in Ireland were repeated on several occasions even though we know they are false: BT will also have Irish rights to all matches and RTÉ will have a Tuesday night game.

Yet, buy a Milky Way in the US, and you'll find caramel in it - it's what we call a Mars Bar. What we call Milky Way is called 3 Musketeers. Why haven't those been standardised?

So it's not just TV3, 3e and Be3 becoming VM1/2/3 respectively then. Changing the profile of 3e and Be3 yet again isn't going to help anybody.

Even if they rebranded them VM3, VM3e and VMBe3 that would work a bit better. No doubt after the initial emphasis on the parent brand they'll get lazy and just call then One, Two and Three anyway.

I think you've missed the point I was trying to make...

While a lot of people were unhappy about the loss of the Opal Fruits and Marathon names, and some still are to this day (and I'm not sure I'd call them cloth-eyed little Englanders stuck in the 1970s - I'm sure some of them are Welsh, Scottish, Irish or Northern Irish ), these rebranding exercises *did* make some sense. As you say, why use local branding when you can use the exact same brand in every country the product is sold in and thus save heaps of cash?

That said, Walkers still hasn't been rebranded as Lay's. If it did, then it would be the exact same scenario - many people wouldn't be happy and some would defiantly continue to call them Walkers (and probably wouldn't care too much if they were called cloth-eared old gits as a result), but PepsiCo would save money and the crisps would still fly off the shelves.

Here, though, it just feels like VMI are rebranding TV3 to suit themselves more than anything else. They're rebranding a product that they own but isn't necessarily related to any other products they own that already use the Virgin Media brand (in contrast to Opal Fruits/Starburst, Marathon/Snickers and Walkers/Lay's, as well as Jif/Cif, Ulay/Olay, etc). And I'm not sure they'd be saving a great deal of money, either - especially when the Virgin Media brand isn't free.

Any reason why Saturday/Sunday AM was from the TV3 garden? The weather hasn't been 'that' great to completely go outside this weekend in the Dublin area.

Those Virgin Media Ireland idents from Presentation Archive have the dullest set of faces, except for one person, that I ever seen.

Possibly because those products are so ingrained in their respective markets that it wouldn’t make sense. It’d be like rebranding Coke (not that, presumably, it differs anywhere).

But if there was a marketing reason to do it then they’d do it. Or threaten to do it to get free publicity.

I got reminded of this debate when I saw an ad for Coco Pops on E4 tonight. Who remembers Choco Krispies?

But I digress...

Taking things back to Irish television, RTE One is giving a huge amount of airtime to the Pope’s visit next weekend - with coverage on Saturday from 10am-1pm and 2:55-5:30pm and Sunday 9am-11:30am and 2pm-5:45pm. Hour long Six One both days.