The Late Late Gay Byrne Irish Television Thread

Virgin Media Sports will only be given access of delayed coverage to Republic of Ireland matches including highlights from The Nations League. Exclusive live coverage of the matches will be given to Sky Sports Football. This means it's the first time that Republic of Ireland matches will be shown exclusively to viewers using Pay TV services in Ireland.

There is also another oddity coming out of this deal.

They are showing the more glamorous Nations League matches live featuring other countries but not from The Republic of Ireland team as a priority in not fully understanding that they are coming from an Irish sports channel. This sounds a bit crap for VM Ireland subscribers who would not pay for extra to access a Sky Sports subscription & rely on Virgin Media Sports for all of it's Irish coverage.

https://www.balls.ie/football/nations-league-on-irish-tv-395482

The big, big, issue facing Virgin Media Sport is that not one of the deals they have is fully exclusive in the Irish market. They’ve no exclusive content which is a bit of difficulty when you’re asking viewers to pay €20 per month for your channel. It will possibly stop football fans leaving VM for other platforms to see BT Sport’s coverage, but I can’t see anyone forking our €20pm for it when you can fork out €27pm for the eir/BT pack with all of the same European club football and a whole pile more instead, including BT’s Premier League games which are not available to VM viewers at all.

TV3's coverage of the Pope's visit to Ireland was on Saturday AM and 3 News at 5.30.

Mary Kennedy said last night that The Pope's Mass in Phoenix Park was being shown simultaneously on both RTÉ One & RTÉ2 today and I presume on RTÉ News Now. Does RTÉ2 have any coverage of the mass right now?

No. RTE 2 has alternative viewing.

Back in 1979, RTE 2's alternative was the testcard.

Alright then. RTÉ One's design in the OB set is very basic with couple of chairs with a table & a clear glass background. The graphics like the live bug & the lower thirds are the same that were used from yesterday's coverage on Pope Francis visit to Dublin.

Who was the presenter for the coverage from Knock today?

Didn't catch all of it but from the portion I did see, Caitríona Perry was presenting from studio 3.

RTE were told to provide the best coverage with limited resources. They provide the cameras and broadcast of the Mass, which all other broadcasters take. Sky News, BBC etc all take RTE footage. As Bryan Dobson said this morning, RTE are the providers of the cameras, sound etc.

Far preferable to a mass.

I know when they were covering the concert in Croke Park, they made use of the Sunday Game set in one of the boxes in the Canal End stand.

A preview of Virgin Media News.

Virgin Media News has no Irish connection at all. Yes, TV3 is just two letters and a number, but it was first sole independent station, and the number 3 pre-dates TG4 as since 1989 there were plans for a third channel, which would be independent. So TV3 has a history. Virgin Media is a British company brand, and it would be like ITV buying TV3 and renaming it ITV Ireland. It just feels wrong.