TV3 News - Ireland

I think it's highly unlikely that UTV Ireland will broadcast ITV News bulletins because they cover the news for the UK, not the Republic.

With regard to your question about the Champions/Europa League, I'm not informed well enough to answer it.

I'd have to agree ITN 6:30 news is unlikely but not impossible. UK news programmes are watched in every news watching house in the country. That's why the Angelus is still so popular on RTE One. It gives people the chance to see the headlines on BBC One before they turn over to Six One on RTE. Plus for a time when Sky News Started RTE used to show a full 2 and a half hours a day of SKY news with Irish Headlines at 2 minutes to the hour.

On the latter the tender is yet to be issued. Unless BT Sport go for the Irish rights too Id expect the current rights holder to renew.

On the former, UTV Ireland's stated intention is to mirror the ITV network schedule as closely as they possibly can but I don't think they will show the ITV News principally because they don't have to and it would come at extra costs. If they wished to do so and were willing to pay ITN there would in theory be no issue with them doing. If they show Good Morning Britain (which I think they might - they are showing Lorraine and the two shows are effectively joined at the hip) we would see ITV News during that.

I'm not sure they would show Good Morning Britain actually. It wouldn't seem right. They'd be better doing their own thing, surely? How does Breakfast television do already in Ireland?



It sounds very much like UTV are going head to head with RTE with the news at 6pm; I wouldn't be surprised if it was an hour long.

Pretty sure they've stated it'll be 30mins at 6pm with a full hour at 10pm.

I agree that UTV will surely do their own thing...though it might be one way of GMB gaining at least 6 more viewers.

Pretty sure they've stated it'll be 30mins at 6pm with a full hour at 10pm.[/quote]

Their website mentioned "Ireland Live" as being an early evening edition - maybe they'll run it at 6.30 to replace ITV National News and place something else at 6pm?

Regarding GMB - would Irish viewers take to a show called Good Morning Britain? Although not immediately, I could see UTV doing their own thing, even if it was a straight half hour news bulletin repeated between 6 or 6.30 and 8.30.

Breakfast television figures for Ireland are really low in that most Irish people do not feel the need to switch on Ireland Am, BBC Breakfast or Sunrise on Sky News in the early hours of the morning. GMB would not get a high viewership here in Ireland because not many Irish people in general switch on the TV at that time because most of them have a job and a family to look after as their only priority.

I heard that the viewership figures for Ireland Am are in and around 20,000 viewers a day which I think is very marginal although I could be wrong on that. However I do think more Irish people are normally radio listeners when they go into work in the morning.

The peak audience in morning television in regards to the time of day would be at 11am in where most people have to gone to work at that hour. Most of the other people who watch the TV at that hour are mainly kids and OAP's.

The Irish Audience really wouldn't care. They'd know it was a show made in London for the UK market. Just like Britain's Got Talent has been going out for years on TV3. I can't see UTV doing anything themselves at breakfast other than a headline news service. The audience just isn't there. Breakfast TV has never taken off in this part of the world (Ireland & UK) ITV keep relaunching their show, did anyone actually think that maybe people just don't want to watch TV that early in the morning and that the audience is limited?

Ireland AM on TV3 makes the proud claim that it's Ireland's number one Breakfast TV show, but that's really in a field of one. If UTV Ireland were getting 30,000 viewers at breakfast it would be considered a success.

Don't think this is any different to the UK really. But...


This. Morning Ireland's massive listenership in the chattering classes and then the success of the mindless pop radio breakfast show formats (particularly in Dublin the Strawberry Alarm Clock, and Ian Dempsey elsewhere) are the main reasons breakfast TV hasn't taken off so much. RTE had problems with the unions for years trying to get a show off the ground and by the time they had resolved them TV3 and Ireland AM had taken off. Also it is mad afraid of cannibalising Morning Ireland's massive listenership hence the strange Morning Edition late breakfast show concept.

I think this is fairly common across Ireland and the UK. We never had Breakfast TV of any sort until the 80's so we never got used to it like in America where turning on the TV at breakfast would be far more normal. Any chance that Breakfast TV would catch on has disappeared with New technology coming in over the last 20 years. People who are on the go don't have time to watch TV. Viewership figures will be much lower. In Germany the two public service broadcasters air the same show, taking turns each week to produce it.

Part of the reason Morning Edition exists on RTE 1 at 9.00am is because starting production earlier would cost a lot of money for little or no audience. They had to cut back RTE News on 2 to allow Morning Edition to exist at all!

Ireland AM only existed for a long time to fullfill TV3 Irish production quotas. Figures before 9am for that show are terrible. It does pick up from 8.30am onwards but still wouldn't be getting more than 50,000 on a fantastic week. (most weeks half of that)

If UTV Ireland get GMB for little or nothing I think they'll show it. Otherwise it's likely that they'll just show 2 and half hours of infomercials. Lorraine at 8.30 would be very worrying to Ireland AM. If a breakdown of TV3's Daytime programmes was available I would suspect they would have a over reliance on Saorview only households and second sets with only Saorview. If UTV Ireland offer a different choice on Saorview, Ireland AM's small figures could become a lot smaller.

I think it's impossible because ITV News has no direct relevance to the Republic. Besides, UTV Ireland has its own news bulletin at 10 so, even if UTV Ireland wanted to show the ITV News at 6:30, it still wouldn't make sense because 6:30 bulletin includes a preview of stories that will be shown on ITV News at 10.