Irish Television

Looking through various websites on the history of Irish Television I've noticed the dearth of channels. AFAIK there are about 6-7 channels from RTE. Why is this?

RTE provide RTE One, RTE Two, RTE News Now, RTE Junior and RTE One +1.

Virgin Media Ireland provide Virgin Media One, Virgin Media Two and Virgin Media Three

TG4 the Irish language channel

Does this help?

Yes, it does thanks but why did it take so long to copy/follow/emulate the increase of channels such as we had in the 90's?

Money.

Money. That is the reason. You have to remember, until 1998, RTE had a monopoly on television. There was no independent television channel in Ireland until TV3 (now renamed Virgin Media One) came along, and became the ITV version for the Republic of Ireland.

RTE have been and will always be strapped for cash. They are funded by a licence fee, like us here in the UK, however it is a pittance compared to the income the BBC get from a licence fee, due to the small size of Ireland.

So, RTE launched as Telefis Eireann on 31st December 1961. Then they waited until 2nd November 1978 to provide RTE 2, a choice for viewers who could not receive the UK channels either via cable television or spill over signal from Wales or Northern Ireland.

Also, RTE 2 was on the brink of closure in 1982 when RTE suffered huge financial cutbacks, due to them staging the Eurovision Song Contest, which nearly bankrupted RTE.

You understand now why channels are not so plentiful from Irish broadcasters compared to BBC, ITV, Channel 4 etc here in the UK?

Plus the fact many people in eire could watch BBC and ITV stations here, was its possible to get Ch4?

Yes, in fact all cable television operators provided at least one version of it. Channel 4 or the Welsh S4C

Remember that there are only 6 million people in Ireland. Licence Fee and advertising income won’t stretch as far as it does here

160 Euro a year licence fee per household with a television receiver. 4.7 million population, adjust it for households, and do the math and you see what little RTE get from the licence fee compared to the BBC.

Past figures show, RTE pulls in around 180 million Euro a year from the licence fee. 130 million Euro a year from commercial revenue. So 310 million Euro a year.

BBC - £4.9 Billion in 2016.

And there is the difference.

Then they entered My Lovely Horse to make sure they didn't win again

Yes, Ireland won in 1980 and RTE had to stage the 1981 event. It totally drained their resources, and they came so close to closing RTE 2. Instead the channel suffered huge cutbacks, with the schedules starting at 5.45pm and ending at 11.30pm