No, They're just not going to move Primetime from it's Normal 9.30 Slot. Putting it on at 7.30 on Friday was their own choice as the next episode is going out Live at 8 on Friday. RTE have little or no concern for UTV Ireland between 7 and 8 Monday to Friday. It was the one Hour that TV3 was likely to win because of the Soaps. All that's happened is that they've moved to another Channel with no loss of RTE Audience at that time (they were already gone) That 7.30 edition will not do well as most soap watchers will watch on BBC 1 on Thursday night. There is very little on TV3 or UTV Ireland that will effect the current RTE 1 audience. Some of the UTV Ireland Dramas will have a minor impact but nothing too noticeable. It seems that most of UTV Ireland Gains are from UTV itself or TV3.

Excellent post summing up the situation very well. UTV Ireland's main winners are the 2 soaps they have gained from TV3 but outside of this they seem to have made little impact. I'm surprised their early evening news is half way through RTE's and they might be better going for an earlier start either at 5.00pm or going head to head with TV3 at 5.30pm.

Is Saturday Night Takeaway popular in Ireland as it could be a winner for UTV Ireland. Also next Wednesday UTV Ireland are broadcasting The Brit Awards

When things settle down Saturday Night Takeaway should be a ratings winner for UTV Ireland. Ant and Dec are very popular for some reason. The reruns on TV3 that have been repeated over and over again are still getting an audience on Saturday Evenings.

You might be surprised to see how high the Taoiseach's speech will rank in the ratings... could be the highest viewed programme that time slot.

Only because there's nothing else on. The Ard Fheis speech by the leader has always dragged down Saturday Night Ratings. That's why it was reduced to 30 minutes from the hour. Of course parties could take the full hour still if they give the speech at 5pm. Having said that if it gets 150,000 viewers which is pretty low it will probably be the highest viewed programme as the audience will be fairly fragmented at that stage.

TV3 will be delighted with this PR boost!

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/m...-tv3-1.2108435

Fair play to TV3 for getting it published. But shame on the Irish Times for printing such a puff piece. Almost no research done by the journalist.

Is Emmerdale starting tonight at 6.45 like the UK or are UTV Ireland airing it at 7pm

7-8pm

Turns out they did move Primetime from its normal slot, pushing it back to 10pm and cutting the News back a couple of minutes, to accommodate the Eastenders special. With the live reveal at the end of the special episode, RTÉ really had to show it at the same time as the BBC, as the reveal will be all over the media tomorrow.

That was a late change but a wise one. Practically all Eastenders viewers wouldn't have waited until tomorrow night anyway. It would have given BBC1 it's highest viewership in years in the Republic if RTE had stuck to it's original plan.

To be honest Rte should have never even thought about not showing the Flashback ep as BBC 1 is available as you said and it is only for one week

The fact that RTÉ pushed back a live Prime Time interview with the Irish Taoiseach is where a few eyebrows are being raised .. RTÉ is a state broadcaster, they could have easily moved eastenders to RTÉ2.

As much as I'm enjoying the past few posts of UTV Ireland discussion it would make for a very interesting thread if we could have at least a few off-topic posts

Mixed news for UTV Ireland - Rare Breed continues to draw viewers with 177k +15s, but Ant and Dec slightly disappoint at 120k. Over at Ballymount, the Champions League matches Rare Breed, but the Red Rock canary appears to have developed carbon monoxide poisoning at 73k!

You're looking at the health of the Red Rock Canary on Wednesday Night there. 24 hours later the Canary seems to have died. It didn't even make the top twenty with 20th place coming in at 65,000.

I agree it’s a mixed bag for UTV Ireland. They have issues outside of the soaps with the repeats of their Dramas. However, they have proven they can get an audience for Home produced stuff if they actually go and make it. Of course the support of the soaps is a great help for any show they decide to launch, even if that's only a few a year.

Ant and Dec should improve as the weeks go by. Viewing figures weren’t helped by TV3 claiming that they were showing the new series in Listing and certain Irish Celebs on Twitter saying that both TV3 and UTV Ireland were showing the same episode. The EPG is not helping UTV Ireland, It will take time for people to get used to not pressing 3/103 for certain programmes.

But there was some good news in the ratings for UTV Ireland as well, the Same can’t be said for TV3 or indeed RTE2 but RTE2 don’t have to make a profit to survive. TV3 ratings are now worse than February 1999 when they only had 70% coverage in the Republic. Their one and only bright spark in the schedules (Champions League) is being hampered greatly outside of UPC areas by not having HD. I know a lot of people that watched that Match last Tuesday and none of them watched on TV3.

Shame you say? Don't get overdramatic now will you?

I thought the only Taoiseach was the Irish one. I have never heard of the Belgian Taoiseach!

If you want something overdramatic read the piece, it really is terrible journalism. It might be excused if it were in the features section, but it's supposed to be a business piece. Sadly it represents a trend in Irish Journalism where little work is done. However, I will say well done to the PR people in TV3 who are working in an a very difficult situation.

Don't be pedantic..

Will Leahy of 2fm reports that the soaps will revert to TV3 from the 1st of December - given that they were the sole raison d'être for UTV Ireland, how long will the channel remain as an EPG entity?

https://mobile.twitter.com/willleahy...21377544306688

Not sure how long they'll do simulcasting for, but Emmerdale, Coronation Street and I'm a Celeb are going to be on both TV3 and UTV Ireland at the start of December, presumably just to get people back into the habit of watching TV3 before it's dropped from UTV Ireland and it'd be weird to show Emmerdale Mon-Wed on one channel then swap to another for Thu-Fri, although it's very weird to start showing I'm a Celeb on TV3 with only a few days left and the Six O'Clock Show forces Xpose more into prime time between soap slots.

As there's still all the other ITV content that TV3 now have the rights to, there's no point in closing UTV Ireland yet, TV3 will get the soaps and other popular things off it and rebrand it, but unless they massively reduce the amount of repeats on 3e, they have too much content to cram onto TV3.

I did hear from the Belfast telegraph that utv Ireland will continue using the utv staff from Belfast