This time it played the ads then stopped

It would still be a loss to the Irish viewers if it happened. UTVI is just a rebranded form of UTV meaning Irish viewers would be losing the main independent Irish competitor to RTE, a channel that's been there for 16 years.

Would UTVI be able to pull substantial advertising revenue for a lot of the dross they're showing apart from Corrie and Emmerdale?

It's Debatable if it would be a major loss to homes that have more than Saorview. (Saorview only homes are around 10% allegedly.) TV3 have done a huge amount of Damage to the broadcasting sector in Ireland. Complaining at every stage about practically everything. They go nowhere near to providing the service that they were supposed to provide. Anything decent that they have made wouldn't have gotten made if the sound and vision fund (the Licence Fee) didn't stump up much of the cash. They have allowed RTE to carry on with little or no competition.

Even when it came to UTV there was every effort made to block the station from starting. As it is the Launch of UTV does give more choice and a lot more News in Primetime. And while their News only appears to be a five day operation at the moment, it looks properly financed and resourced.

If it did close there would be room in the market for another broadcaster to start up shop. However that broadcaster would have to aim at a different Market than the typical ITV viewer.

On the other hand if it's relaunched and aimed in a different direction it could still prosper. Why not put the News on at 7 when no other Live Irish Bulletin is on? Why not put Vincent Browne on at 7.30. Those that watch Vincent are probably not the ones that watch Coronation Street.
Why not put the Soap on at 10 when everyone else is Doing News?

Any organization that schedules 4 Tipping Point repeats in a row on a Sunday Afternoon (3e on Sunday the 11th) has no idea what's going on.

Plus once you get into week two of January UTV Ireland often has a better line up than UTV NI

The ideal scenario of course would be TV3 surviving for years to come and UTVI prospering. That way Irish viewers would have four terrestrial English language channels and a good bit of variety.

I'd agree with that if only because It would be nice if decent people didn't lose jobs.

Most 9pm shows on Utv Ireland is much better than 9 pm on Utv NI.

Utv I Utv NI
Sun 4 - Foyle's War Foyle's War
Mon 5 - Doc Martin Broadchurch
Tues 6- Midsomer The wonder
Murders Of Britain
Wed 7 - The Bletchly Midsomer
Circle Murders
Thurs 8- Benidorm Bring Back
Borstal
Fri 9 - Undeniable Benidorm

From sun to Fri Utv I is showing 6 scripted shows while Utv Ni only has 4 scripted shows

There's a lot of Irish viewer on Twitter disappointed that they've lost the original UTV, as UTV Ireland is missing some programmes.

The only major programme they have missed this week is Broadchurch which is on tv3.

Also there Saturday night schedule is totally different

UTV show it in Northern Ireland (which is not part of Britain),

Life will possibly be going on after The Lie has finished. No point placing Life up aganst Nationwide as both sound pretty similar. The Lie received around 160,000 viewers last year, while Nothing To Declare had always been a steady ratings programme when on Monday nights on TV3 bringing in around 150,000, and is not a daytime filler. These are also new episodes they are showing as well.

Don't see how UTV Ireland are building up their audience? How can repeats of Doc Martin, Bletchley Circle, Midsommer Murders, Undeniable, 20 year old films airing in primetime, a 3 hour Peter Pan musical be building up an audience?

Meanwhile TV3 will have a brand new soap launching next week, along with home produced programmes with Ireland's Oyster Clan, The Algorithm, The Holiday Show, The Guarantee, The Restaurant, Renovation Nation, Donal MacIntrye Series, Songs For Inspiration.

And take into consideration they have the biggest sporting tournament this year in terms of the Rugby World Cup, along with Champions League, The X Factor for 4 months, Britains Got Talent for 2 months, exclusive rights to Broadchurch and Downton Abbey.

As for news at the weekend, UTV Ireland won't have news between 7pm on Friday and 6.30pm on Monday. The 10pm Ireland Live show on Friday is dedicated to sport. So that's a much bigger gap than TV3's, as they have news on Ireland AM on 7am Monday morning.
Weekend news is mainly sports news and some miniscule news report. TV3 were right to save money here, and put more focus on their weekday news.They have around 6 5-10minute news reports in Ireland AM, 30mins for News At 12:30, 30mins for The 5:30, and News update with Vincent Browne, along with an hour long review of the days main story. A lot more than UTV Ireland will ever show.

I dont think Bletchley Circle or Undeniable have aired in Ireland officially before

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Apols, not normally pedantic. Sat-ire, you're making a fair point, but you know that UTV in NI don't broadcast Lorraine! Its part of the ITV Breakfast licence, and thus broadcast by them.

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I suspect that the real reason for not taking Good Morning Britain is commercial rather than anything else. Cost, complexity and the lack of audience expectation probably add-up to running from 0625 would be a big deal.

I can see UTV being tempted into the area at some point, especially if it could be integrated in some way with their own radio stations.

That's what I've been wondering myself : how can a channel rehashing a load of ITV content pose a serious threat to TV3 to the point where they would be forced to close down? You could certainly easily imagine it happen if UTVI were pumping billions into their channel and coming up with lots of original Irish programming, but at the moment apart from CS and Emmerdale and their news programmes, they resemble more of a digital channel than a major terrestrial one.

First day of UTV Ireland and I'm not at all impressed. The channel is a load of rubbish! I came to that conclusion last night when they were showing Pat Kenny. Who wants to watch him??? And to top it all off, I got an email from UPC today and my bill is going up to €45 a month I'm gonna get rid of UPC and just use my FTA dish as my sole source of TV. I'm considering an aerial for the Irish channels but I don't know if it's worth it. Dad thinks he wants them but I told him if there was anything on RTE he wanted to watch he can just watch it on RTE Player on his Surface Pro

Haven't been at all impressed with UTVI so far, they seem to have a load of dross in their schedule.

And 45 euros a month increase for UPC is a hell of a big jump.

Yeah and a lot of other shows have been cut out! Seems there was a lot of backlash on Twitter and Facebook about Pat Kenny pre-empting The Dark Knight. I don't blame them. I don't know anyone who likes Pat Kenny He's not popular at all in my house. I guess there's a reason he left RTE It probably wouldn't be so bad if they got some new talent rather than dead wood, but there ya go. It's ridiculous I know people who are paying that much a month for Sky and they get more choice of channels and all that. It's ridiculous. The service isn't even that good! The bill is in my dad's name and he has to give them a month's notice that we're cancelling. I'm at college full time doing a Masters so I'm relying on my parents to sort it all out, but I'm helping them out by educating them a bit on satellite telly since they're total n00bs in that area

To be fair to UTV - this is their first day broadcasting.. I'm sure improve content will come as rights become available.

Nice to see the TV3 Representative has arrived It's not odd that it's on the 2nd of January, right when many people are back at work.

I doubt many people are back at work for one day. Most places will have there workers back on Monday

Just a few points, If the Lie and Nothing to Declare were getting those figures they'd be all over the top 20 of TV3 shows over the last year, they aren't. TV3 press releases don't count. They show a show several times and then add up the figures. Advertisers aren't that interested in numbers for the same show shown 5 times.

Even if they were doing that well the reason was almost entirely the bump the soaps were giving them. Once you strip out ITV shows, Most TV3 shows are only doing slightly better than RTE2, and RTE2 doesn't do that well once Sport is taken out of the mix.

It's a soft launch which means that we really can't start to judge UTV until next week. However, The same could be said for TV3, How can repeating year old eps of ITV's Saturday Night Takeaway build a Saturday Night Audience, and lets be fair, old gameshows are pretty worthless after they're shown the first time or two. Drama does last a lot longer.

Some of TV3's new shows are decent, but a lot are just poor attempts at the same audience that UTV is aiming for. They will prefer the ITV shows, there's 50 plus years of research and facts to back that up.

Having exclusive rights to Xfactor and Downton is Great as is the World cup but they're all in September when the Damage will have been done.

UTV will have news on a Friday at 10, the bulletin will concentrate more on Sports. If TV3 showed any of their News in Prime time you might have had a point, but there is almost no one watching Morning TV in Ireland.

I back neither Station personally. I'm just interested in the economics of the situation. Only the News programme would Draw me to UTV, I would also watch news on TV3 but like most people I work all day. You know there's a large section of TV3 viewers that would never have seen a TV3 news bulletin for this very reason.

Totally off topic of course and it was a bit of a joke. There are lots back to work today, Most work places are open. Most of My friends are working as it's a doss day at work with nothing happening and they didn't want to waste a days leave on it. Of course if you're in Scotland it's a bank Holiday.

it's supposed to go on air now in the Summer as they don't have enough money to put it on.

The launch trailer is very self indulgent. They seem more proud of the fact they got the go ahead than anything else. And to end cheap looking idents. Slap a logo on top of a video. Their tag line sounds very cheap too.

I think the best battle so far of TV3 v UTV I is about to take place at 6pm.

On Tv3 they are showing a repeat of
Boyzone at 20 while UTV I are showing Westlife: For the last time.

The question is who will win Boyzone or Westlife

Have UTVI ditched a lot of regular UTV content? Their afternoon schedule looked completely different to what would normally go out on UTV on a Friday afternoon.

And just noticed all the ITN news bulletins are gone. Does that mean Irish viewers will never be able to watch ITN again??