TI'm not really sure about the name Ireland Live, it seems like they started with UTV Live but decided they had to tweak it for the Republic. I think UTV News - or anything with "UTV" in the title - would have been better for the brand.
When UTV were pitching to take over the ITV news service for Wales under that silly plan which got panned a few years ago, their provisional title for the service was "Wales Live", so I can see the line of logic.
I've been dipping in and out of the channel for the last few days, and I've picked up a couple of observations:
The start of the continuity announcements keep getting cut off, example being; "ation Street is here in an hour on UTV Ireland..."
Also there's been quite a lack of in-vision continuity during prime time, having seen the junctions last night at 8.00pm, 8.30pm, 9.00pm and 10.00pm there was no IVC, yet UTV NI had IVC at 7.00pm and 8.00pm from what I'd seen.
:-(
A former member
UTVI is running its automation approx. 2 min ahead of ITV for Stars In Their Eyes. Consequently it showed two full ITV trailers and an announcerless (but UTVI DOGed) Hula-Hoop ident. But it also means it's cutting to break - as well as returning - early, cropping the show and uncovering a VT clock.
I thought UTV and UTVI got a clean feed of ITV, otherwise they would get ECPs over the credits as well? It's hardly clean if it's putting out trailers and idents.
Notice both UTV and TV3 were due to air The Cube tonight at 8pm. Seems UTV has blinked and shifts it to 6pm next week, strangely replacing it with 101 Ways to Leave a Gameshow - or 1 Way not to make a Gameshow as it probably should be known.
Presentation On UTV Ireland was a disaster most of the night when I dipped in and out. They kept showing the ITV feed and the way the cube took commerical Breaks was very jarring, there was no back in a moment, just straight into the break after a moment of action. I would have to presume there's no one paying attention to the Dublin output.
UTV do have a long history of this of course. I have memories of UTV just dropping off air at about 11.30 when they were joining whatever night time service they linked up with (this is more than 10 years ago) the screen would remain black until GMTV took to the air at 6am. It happened more than once.
:-(
A former member
Why isnt UTV getting a clean feed? The same could apply to STV since you can still spot ITV stuff if your very fast, or is that just linked to LIve stuff.
Am I right in saying that STV receive a dirty feed from ITV stripped over the ECPs? I'm sure I remember seeing somewhere that the logic of this was that they could easily receive live trailers for upcoming shows (eg the news, I'm A Celebrity and so forth). It does leave them open to showing ITV output if they're not careful but STV at least are good at hiding this - only the odd clip here and there.
Would be interested in the Irish reaction to UTV Ireland, especially given that it's taken over from UTV Northern Ireland. A few people I've heard from are unhappy they've lost the latter service, especially as it means some shows are no longer available or on another channel (there was an amusing exchange where UTV Ireland said they didn't have Broadchurch, at which point someone from TV3 jumped in to say they had it instead).
There is certainly a lot of upset at losing UTV, much more so in urban areas where cable is still the dominant platform and UTV had been available for 45 years. In other areas where Sky is more popular and cable/MMDS has only been available since the 1990s (and most MMDS customers have migrated to Sky) the annoyance is a lot less and Sky viewers are generally glad to have it on their EPGs and can still access ITV through other channels the way they always have been able to do.