RTE Reception

It's probably just atmospherics, but I noticed that my UHF channel from which I was watching Sky wasn't exactly giving a brilliant picture half an hour ago - so I switched off the box.... and saw in its place a relatively clear RTE Network 2 picture.

On further tuning, I'm picking up all four Irish terrestrials - interesting given I live in the north-east part of Northern Ireland not used to any form of Irish terrestrial reception... and we've only one aerial which is horizontally polarised and pointing towards Belfast's Divis transmitter.

Checking the UHF readings and comparing them with a trusty website on the subject (thank you Richard Logue, if you ever read this http://icdg.come.to/ ), it seems I'm picking up reception from the Cairn Hill transmitter in the Irish midlands - much further south than the vertically polarised Clermont Carn that people in Belfast can tune to and get reasonably decent reception.

Well, it brightened my evening anyway.

On a completely unrelated note, both RTE One and Network 2 are both boasting channel dogs (N2 a dog which has the RTE logo sitting next to the N2 one), meaning all four Irish channels now sport DOGs.

A.J.A.
"It's probably just atmospherics, but I noticed that my UHF channel from which I was watching Sky wasn't exactly giving a brilliant picture half an hour ago - so I switched off the box.... and saw in its place a relatively clear RTE Network 2 picture.

On further tuning, I'm picking up all four Irish terrestrials - interesting given I live in the north-east part of Northern Ireland not used to any form of Irish terrestrial reception... and we've only one aerial which is horizontally polarised and pointing towards Belfast's Divis transmitter.

Checking the UHF readings and comparing them with a trusty website on the subject (thank you Richard Logue, if you ever read this http://icdg.come.to/ ), it seems I'm picking up reception from the Cairn Hill transmitter in the Irish midlands - much further south than the vertically polarised Clermont Carn that people in Belfast can tune to and get reasonably decent reception.

Well, it brightened my evening anyway."

Interesting - I wonder if this applies to the more far-reaching parts of NI that don't have the advantage of picking up RTE signals from transmitters close to the Border.

"On a completely unrelated note, both RTE One and Network 2 are both boasting channel dogs (N2 a dog which has the RTE logo sitting next to the N2 one), meaning all four Irish channels now sport DOGs."

I spotted that yesterday too, up in the top left hand corner. Must have been introduced yesterday from the looks of it. More unusually, N2 has its channel DOG during Den 2, which still has its own DOG on the top right hand corner of the screen.

On a different note, who was that reading the news on Radio Ulster on Tuesday morning?

It’s interesting that RTE and N2 both have dogs now. Well it was only a matter time. BBC One and 2 will be next on the dog hit list!

Nice pic to show others what its like.
http://www.thetvroom.com/images-rte-one/images-2003/dog-1.jpg
From the TV Room

Anyone got a pic of the N2 dog?

Regarding Network 2, is it going to be changing back to RTE 2 in the future? Is it likely or never in a month of Sundays? Why was it changed in the first place? I'm not very clued up on Ireland TV. Need to get studying. Oh, and can anyone recommend a good website to get RTE1/2/TV3 and TG4 listings. The only things I have found have been poor! Do Ireland not have anything like the Radio Times site??

This Is Granada:
"Regarding Network 2, is it going to be changing back to RTE 2 in the future? Is it likely or never in a month of Sundays? Why was it changed in the first place?"

Network 2 changed its name from RTE 2 in 1988, to coincide with a relaunch of the schedules (all sports programmes and children's programmes moved from RTE 1), and had a great red/green/blue logo that the station used for 7 years. The channel name was shortened to N2 in 1997 and the station has used the same logo, and more or less the same idents, since then. While N2 is definitely due for a makeover, I'm not aware of any plans for a new logo or new idents, maybe with the DOGs and RTE's improved financial status there might be a new look N2 soon. Not sure if it will go back to being RTE TWO or keep the N2 name - using the word instead of the number, where have I seen that before now?

"Oh, and can anyone recommend a good website to get RTE1/2/TV3 and TG4 listings. The only things I have found have been poor! Do Ireland not have anything like the Radio Times site??"

Try http://www.rteguide.ie/ - Ireland's equivalent to the RT. Also has BBC NI/UTV etc. listings.

Was it not also a rebrand brought about because RTE2 in it's original incarnation was a complete shambles and they wanted to get away from the name?

Chris Wathen:
"Was it not also a rebrand brought about because RTE2 in it's original incarnation was a complete shambles and they wanted to get away from the name?"

That too. As far as I'm aware, RTE 2's schedule was made up almost exclusively of imports and the same series repeated on a constant loop.

Although I'm sure a lot of N2's audience would not have remembered the old days of RTE 2, so a reversion back to the RTE 2 name wouldn't mean much to the young audience.

N2 is now called RTÉ Network 2, the main point being the re-introduction of the RTÉ name to highlight it's association with the parent.

I'd be certain that the N2 viewers would be evident that it is ran by RTÉ, if you think that they show Nuacht RTÉ and I assume that the sport is somehow run and possibly branded as RTÉ. Plus I am also assuming that both RTÉ One and N2 cross promote each other alá BBC One and BBC Two.

I wonder what would have happened if RTÉ 2 closed in the 1980's, as I have read that they were going to pull the channel as it was losing tons of money.

The second channel has always been 'officially' 'RTÉ Network 2'. The on screen branding has always placed emphasis on 'Network 2' though. The 1995-1997 idents were the only ones since 1988 to include the 'RTÉ' logo.

This was in fact the *key* reason for the name change.

Network 2's idents and pres graphics were revamped last year: programme promotions and holding captions in January...with the idents following on in May...

Indeed, but the look introduced last year is a pale shadow of the quite excellent look introduced in 1997. That look, which came with a whole makeover of how the channel operated (quite similar to what happened in 1988) was very good, included the return of IVC, the introduction of theme nights, the comedy strand, etc.

Sadly it all seems to have fallen apart in the past year or two. Only a semblance of the Monday night comedy strand is left. IVC has been dropped. The excellent graphics have gone in favour of four mundane, boring idents. The distinctive News 2 is gone, its now just a regular "RTE News" bulitten. All that is left of Later on 2 (late night discussion strand)is the John Kelly strand, which is now on RTE ONE.

The same thing happened to the 1988 look... RTE stopped trying after a few years.

One thing to note about the new DOG (introduced Monday, BTW), is that it reads "RTE N2". The RTE logo is used nowhere else in the channel presentation. From a distance, it looks like it says "RTE2"!