The RTE News Thread

Ireland has a population of 4.6 million, compared to over 65 million in the UK.

There simply isn't the market in that for more than one breakfast TV show, and more pointedly RTE doesn't have the resources for it - they are cutting back, selling land and property, initiating redundancy programmes etc in order to keep afloat.

Spending money on a hiding to nothing, for miniscule viewer numbers would not be a good use of the scarce resources RTE have.

As others pointed out - most people in the morning in Ireland listen to the radio, and Morning Ireland is the most listened to programme in the country - that should tell people something.

RTE has always been weak in Daytime and this problem goes back Decades. When The Irish Government were considering giving the Second National Network over to BBC1 back in the Mid Seventies (which is what the 35-40% of the population that couldn't get UK TV wanted) RTE claimed that the second Channel, as well as the first one they already operated, would have just as much broadcast hours as the BBC if they were allowed run it. As soon as they got RTE2 in their pocket it was on for 4 and half hours a day and RTE was on for about 8 and a half hours a day during the week. (less in the Summer!!!) This continued right up to the late 80's.

Now with 24-hour broadcasting, the attitude is to just show cheap stuff between midnight and midday and then perhaps a little more effort the rest of the time. They probably do have a point as the audience is very low before 11am and they can't compete with This Morning on ITV, (Neither could TV3, so they dropped whatever they were showing at that time and started to show This Morning as soon as they got the rights)

As for Breakfast TV, there's barely a need for one service in Ireland, The only reason Ireland AM is on is that TV3 can claim up to 50 hours of Irish Content being broadcast a week. That's if you add up the First run on TV3, and the repeat on Be3 and any best of shows they cobble together. Think about the times that we live in... there's supposedly enough material to have best of Ireland AM shows every weekend

Hence why you take your radio morning programme, make it presentable for television, and bingo! One multimedia show that can air on RTE Radio 1, RTE One TV and RTE News Now.

You've invested money wisely in a product that works on multiple media platforms.

It's not rocket science.

You question the need for it, but the question is irrelevant. Ireland might not need another breakfast TV show, but you could argue that there are plenty of channels on TV that don't need to exist. It's not just ratings that matter in broadcasting, it's credibility too, and RTE's credibility, especially in its news department, took a hit with Morning Edition's creation and cancellation. In those terms, RTE needs to have a breakfast show on its main channel, but it can't spend much because they won't get many viewers by comparison. Hence my idea of improving the visual presentation of Morning Ireland.

How about "RTE Morning News" - airing weekdays from 7.00am-9.00am. Based in the RTE News Studio 3, in effect a basic morning news programme, to give an alternative to the fluff on Ireland AM.

BBC One in 1986 decided to re-brand their Breakfast Time programme into a news driven programme instead of a light fluffy topical show which was the norm from 1983-86, as TV AM had cornered the soft fluffy breakfast programme and BBC did not want to compete.

A "Morning News" would be cheap to do, but would provide an alternative to Irish viewers at a very low cost. The argument that Ireland does not need another breakfast service on television is pointless, as RTE is a public service broadcaster and show provide a decent breakfast service on their main television channel. The licence fee payers deserve a choice, in my opinion.

RTE could easily afford it. They blow so much money on so called "talent" with Ryan Tubridy earning close to 500,000 Euros a year from RTE for what? A one hour radio show (5 hours a week) and The Late Late Show (over 2 hours a week). The argument that they can't find the money is nonsense.

You could go for the New Zealand style one. I think we've mentioned this before on the other thread.

Indeed, but I'd still say if there was only room for one breakfast TV show you'd expect it to be on RTE, as a long running show that they would have started in the late 80s, about five years after the UK breakfast shows started.

Breakfast TV was never a priority in Ireland, certainly not in the 1980s - TV3 only did it simply because it was a route to complying with home produced programming. Given one broadcaster does it, I just don't see the need for it - the target audience is minute.

It really isn't a priority for the public. That's the reality here that some people just don't seem to want to accept.

When I brought this up with work colleagues, I was the only one that watched early morning television (BBC World News and Breakfast) - every single other person preferred to listen to the radio and had no desire to watch television.

Just because that's been the situation in the past, and is currently, doesn't necessarily mean it's going to stay that way.

Times change, habits change. Things that wouldn't have happened before can and sometimes do.

The price of shares can go down as well as up, your mileage may vary, yada yada yada...

TV-am wouldn't have become the success it did without Breakfast Time becoming more News heavy.

Ireland AM is often little more than a rolling infomercial, with added News, Sport & Weather. If RTÉ actually tried something, even a half hour news bulletin at 7am, or a better visualised Morning Ireland with RTÉ Radio 1, Ireland AM would struggle to justify its existence.

You're 100% right, Times Change and so do Habits, But you can't teach old dogs tricks, and that's probably why Breakfast TV never took off in Ireland. Most people over 40 would feel guilty turning the TV on before 10am thus the old audience are likely to stick with their radio. The problem here is that the under 40's aren't used to turning on the TV either, they get their info via Radio, or the internet. Outside of this Forum I have never heard anyone complain about a lack of Breakfast TV in Ireland. I have heard many, many complaints about RTE News not providing a service after 11pm A lot of people I know tuned into the old RTE 2 News for the Late Sports report, especially when TV3 dropped Sports Tonight.

Just to add, the audience at 7am is really, really low as in the thousands (on a good day!) RTE News putting out a bulletin at that time would basically be broadcasting to no-one. Even if they did, they wouldn't put a dent on the Ireland AM audience of a few thousand at that time, they're not exactly Newshounds if they've been watching Ireland AM all this time. Ireland AM did try a format change a few years putting a harder news show on between 7 and 8am, and it was quickly dropped as the small viewership started to drift off elsewhere.

My undestanding on Ireland AM, is that it's audience is around 50,000 viewers, which is around 30% of the available audience at that time of day. I would say that RTE has plenty to aim for, even without touching Ireland AM's audience.

RTE One gets around 20% of the audience during the day, which goes up to around 25% in primetime. Making an effort in the mornings may not get you many viewers, but they are a public service broadcaster, and their first concern, should be providing the service, not commercial pressures.

Sure, they can't spend a lot of money, but again, they don't really need to spend a huge amount to make Morning Ireland presentable for television. They already have a small studio where the RTE News Now updates are done from, so the morning news updates between 7am and 9am could be done from there. They just need to do a little bit of work on making it connect better to TV viewers, rather than looking at tops of heads, and presenters sitting there awkwardly whilst audio is played in.

The work that needs to be done to make it better is really minor overall.

Next Saturday's Main Evening News bulletin is shorter than usual and on at 11:30 because of Eurovision.

There appears to be a Live Nine O Clock News going out on RTE News Now at... 8.45pm. Now that might not be correct as in past listings for that channel haven't been changed from week to week. They won't put the News on RTE 2 unless something major happens on the day. Ratings come first and they don't want to knock back Eurovision any further. RTE have not been too fond of that Saturday Night Bulletin in recent times.