Virgin Media Ireland launch

The budget was clearly spent on the first ident.

Looks like VM2 have quietly dropped their News at Ten now Big Brother has started.

And rather randomly and bizarrly VM3 have nothing better to show on Friday nights than double bill reruns of The Nightly Show.

They haven't dropped it, they've moved it to 9.35/9.40 Monday to Friday. However, there's no real love for News in Virgin Media Television. They have to do it anyway, and it fills out another Hour at 8 and at 9.35 or whenever they decide to show it. The bizarre thing here is, of course, is that the News and the Tonight show have been the only TV3 Homemade shows that delivered decent audiences week in and week out.

I would think the Irish Nation is looking forward to 18-month-old jokes on the Nightly Show which weren't funny the first time around. Technically this is a first run on Virgin Media Three

You get the feeling Virgin Media know all too well that the majority of the people in the Irish republic have complete access to the UK channels via either their own network, Sky, Freesat, broadband tv or online, so they are not bothering too much. If you want to watch Big Brother (at least for this season only) then ok you might need Virgin Media, as Channel 5 is only available on Freesat, tuning in add channels on Sky and some free online streaming, but all the other crap they show you can access fairly easy.

I was able to watch Channel 5 and Virgin Media Two in my hotel room in Galway. The joys of freesat

I had the bizarre experience a few years ago of switching on the TV in my hotel room in Galway, and having South as the selected version of BBC 1 on the hotel system, and seeing a live report on South Today 500 yds away from my home in Hampshire.

In the past it would 90% of the time have been NI, and Wales the other 10% of the time. But DSat changed things. I came across Channel, of all ITV regions to select, in an Irish hotel once.

I'm wondering if that's a copyright issue - if that's even a thing - because of it not being officially broadcast in the country.

If it was when Channel was independent from ITV they might have chosen it because they thought that ITV plc would come after them because they would have been charging for access, but Channel Television wouldn't have bothered?

They aren't supposed to show any UK channels but itv would have no control over it anyway like the issue of over spill. I reckon it was probably the first itv they saw on the list and just thought that'll do I'll set that to channel 3. The same for BBC One - they just saw BBC One and thought that'll do. Us irish are easy going like that. Maybe except me though cus I'd be sorting that right out.

More the latter than the former, I’d wager. Though I’m not sure there’s any problem with them showing any U.K. FTA channels provided the required licensing/IMRO fees are paid.

Anyway, today is TV3’s twentieth anniversary, and right now there’s a Gogglebox special on VM One with some bits and pieces (mostly news excerpts) from TV3’s past, with a special called “Channel Hop: The Story of TV3” coming up at 10pm.

Hotels can show what channels they want through their provider. I stayed in a hotel in Buncrana, County Donegal and they had 60 UK channels, including all BBC, ITV, Ch4, Ch5 along with the Irish channels. Great selection, compared to the good old days, when I remember my mum and dad would only select their Irish hotel as long as they said they had "multi-channel television" in the rooms. And that was in the early 1990s.

It seems similar to the situation in Switzerland where it's very easy to watch UK channels in hotels.