The UTV Ireland Thread

Sale confirmed.

http://www.newstalk.com/UTV-Ireland-confirmed-as-part-of-UTV-Medias-sale-to-ITV

iseegirls

expectationlost wrote: »

no not the round room, the new show

Don't think there's been any mention of a new show. Pat Kenny himself is in doubt about any further work with UTV Ireland over the next while.

FloatingVoter

They might have found something for PK to do if there had been a November election. By next March, I'd imagine PK will be doing election coverage elsewhere or watching it at home.

Skid X

That sale has been agreed, subject to shareholder approval. The UTV brand will ultimately be dropped. Will we see an ITV Ireland or blank screens?


http://www.independent.ie/business/media/itv-to-buy-utv-ireland-as-part-of-100m-deal-34120848.html

UTV Media has confirmed it has entered a £100m agreement to sell its television assets - including UTV Ireland - to ITV.

UTV said the deal would enable it to focus on "continuing opportunities" in radio and online. In connection with the sale the company says it intends to stop using the name "UTV", contingent on shareholder approval.

brian_t

Skid X wrote: »

The UTV brand will ultimately be dropped. Will we see an ITV Ireland or blank screens?

Is it not UTV Media that will stop using the UTV brand name.

ITV could continue to call the channel UTV Ireland if it wished.

This paragraph tells a bit about their objectives.There is plenty of advertising revenue here for ITV and their EPG place is already established!

"UTV also owns 100 per cent of UTV Ireland, which launched a new dedicated channel for the Republic of Ireland on 1 January 2015. UTV Ireland is already the second most-watched channel in peak in Ireland and ITV intends to strengthen the channel further with ITV programming at its core."

http://insidermedia.com/insider/nort...-100m-utv-deal

Mr.Nice Guy

What will happen to UTV Ireland then? Will they continue to have two separate UTV channels on the one island?

Larbre34

I doubt it. No fool other than the current UTV media would keep a zombie like that going. Its a pointless moneypit.

Mickey Mike

If UTV Ireland , ITV Ireland or whatever its going to be called is to be a success it must launch a HD version on Saorview, A MUST. The SD service on Saorview isn't good enough especially on larger Tv screens. They may also consider Saorsat so no one is left out.

FloatingVoter

^ Content is king. Nobody needs Jeremy Kyle and his collection of freaks in HD. They'll have to bring the station back up the standard of the original UTV. Downloading Downton and watching repeats of shows that have just run on UTV isn't a business model.
They'll also need to sack the imbeciles responsible for the last 10 months of stupidity. Shaky starts are one thing - a consistent inability to understand an audience is proof that they belong in another career.

AwaitYourReply

Mickie Mike wrote: »

If UTV Ireland , ITV Ireland or whatever its going to be called is to be a success it must launch a HD version on Saorview, A MUST. The SD service on Saorview isn't good enough especially on larger Tv screens. They may also consider Saorsat so no one is left out.

ITV as new confirmed owners may decide to retain the current UTV brand names for both UTV(NI) in Northern Ireland and UTV Ireland in Republic of Ireland given that the outgoing owners UTV Media have publicly declared their intention to drop the use of "UTV" subject to shareholder approval. My best guess is that there will eventually be ONE channel called ITV Ulster and down south we will effectively have the same channel ITV Éire with adverts sold to the ROI tv viewing audience similar to the various Sky owned channels that have separate frequencies just to accommodate Irish opt out commercial breaks. ITV Eire might even have ITV NEWS AT TEN from ITN in London followed by a dramatically slimmed down "Ireland Live" Irish news-in-brief while the Northern Ireland version shows stories from Ulster.

UTV Ireland is still highly unlikely to appear in HD format on the Saorview Irish DTT digital platform under the current proposed cost arrangement in my view. Furthermore, I think any chance of UTV Ireland going out on the Saorsat platform is even more unlikely than UTV Ireland going HD on Saorview unless the fees are waived altogether which I cannot see happening. ITV is a completely commercial enterprise so they will have absolutely no sentimental interest whatsoever when it comes to running this operation. If they are permitted to do something that earns ITV more revenue without being unethical or damaging the brand's reputation then this will be their rule of thumb I suspect. Playing the "green" Ireland card was attempted by UTV Media plc and it was unsuccessful in terms of their own financial projections costing shareholders huge losses and which brought about the end of UTV operating the UK's Channel 3 independent tv licence in the Northern Ireland franchise region for the first time since 1959! ITV will want to make money and will look at doing so in a cost effective way whether they continue or not with the UTV Ireland/ITV Éire channel down south!

AwaitYourReply

FloatingVoter wrote: »

^ Content is king. Nobody needs Jeremy Kyle and his collection of freaks in HD. They'll have to bring the station back up the standard of the original UTV. Downloading Downton and watching repeats of shows that have just run on UTV isn't a business model.
They'll also need to sack the imbeciles responsible for the last 10 months of stupidity. Shaky starts are one thing - a consistent inability to understand an audience is proof that they belong in another career.

I reckon ITV will share the views you have outlined here too - They will be so cautious about sinking any more financial resources into a bottomless money pit and will not hang on to those who messed up since UTV Ireland was set up first day (even pre-launch on 01-Jan-2015).

Muahahaha

Mickie Mike wrote: »

If UTV Ireland , ITV Ireland or whatever its going to be called is to be a success it must launch a HD version on Saorview, A MUST. The SD service on Saorview isn't good enough especially on larger Tv screens. They may also consider Saorsat so no one is left out.

I'd say having lost 16m their priorities are not on HD right now. As said content is king and thats why they're in so much trouble

AwaitYourReply wrote: »

I reckon ITV will share the views you have outlined here too - They will be so cautious about sinking any more financial resources into a bottomless money pit and will not hang on to those who messed up since UTV Ireland was set up first day (even pre-launch on 01-Jan-2015).

spot on, management will be out to lance any loss making boils, no point throwing good money after bad is the approach I'd expect.

I feel sorry for Pat Kenny in a way. After he got shafted out of RTE and the Frontline I'd hoped he'd make a proper comeback. UTV didn't use him to his strengths. Kenny himself made a blunder by not insisting on his own current affairs program but so too did the management of UTV who wrongly thought he was better placed to do light entertainment. Kennys strengths are political programming and debates, its astonishing that the management at UTV never copped that.

AwaitYourReply

Muahahaha wrote: »

I'd say having lost 16m their priorities are not on HD right now. As said content is king and thats why they're in so much trouble



spot on, management will be out to lance any loss making boils, no point throwing good money after bad is the approach I'd expect.

I feel sorry for Pat Kenny in a way. After he got shafted out of RTE and the Frontline I'd hoped he'd make a proper comeback. UTV didn't use him to his strengths. Kenny himself made a blunder by not insisting on his own current affairs program but so too did the management of UTV who wrongly thought he was better placed to do light entertainment. Kennys strengths are political programming and debates, its astonishing that the management at UTV never copped that.

I could not agree with you more about Pat Kenny. I know he can often annoy some people at times because he can come across as a bit removed from Joe Public because of his earning status and the wealth he has accumulated over the years although, I think he may have lost a small fortune on investments after the economic crash like some other high profile personalities too.
However; Pat Kenny is a fine broadcaster especially at current affairs and The Frontline was playing to his strengths. I feel that he was scapegoated for the Presidential Debate controversy when they pushed him back to Primetime and he was not happy as there were probably others involved behind the scenes that fed him the information. Kenny did not always look like he was in his comfort zone as Mr Light Entertainment in the form of The Late Late Show either however; Pat Kenny-In The Round was a bizarre creation by UTV Ireland for a whole host of reasons such as:

Recording/Not LIVE is not the way we do talk shows in Ireland
it's broadcasting time slot was strange - Mon 9:00pm versus RTE1 Main News
it took too long after station launch
Show first aired around April/May period which is unusual for Irish TV chat show
They only began to seriously plug it AFTER the show first aired!
Too much time in each show devoted to just ONE Guest usually - no variety to the format like we break for a musical interlude!
Choice of guests not always gonna capture mainstream viewers
No interaction with the invited audience

Of course UTV Ireland could have played Pat Kenny to his strengths but they were asleep. In the meantime, RTÉ gave birth to Claire Byrne Live (the eventual return of The Frontline) so UTV Ireland missed the boat as Kenny could have done something for the new station that might have attracted tv viewers away from RTÉ had they boxed clever.

Listening to The Pat Kenny Show from 10:00am-12:30pm Mon-Fri on NewsTalk 106-108FM and it makes interesting intelligent radio with a wide variety on topics. NewsTalk are lucky to have landed him and I believe his audience here will keep growing as he comes across as very enthusiastic and engaged with the show.

Dodge

The problem with his TV gig was that it didn't fit in with the rest of the ITV/UTV line up. A serious one hour chat show simply didn't belong on the channel. The quality was immaterial in many ways

UTV suffered from not holding the Irish rights to many of the most popular ITV shows such as Downton Abbey. There's really not much they can do until new rights issues come up

Oh and sport. The only reason I'd ever watch ITV

Could never understand why they never showed films, ITV have a great library of classic movies and I am surprised that they didn't secure Irish rights to broadcast some of them here.

Harry Palmr

I think ITV will try to get their sickly child in HD sooner rather than later, they know the whole enterprise needs a lift and yes picture quality does matter on saorview as SD is so atrocious. As for content, that will take longer to fix with so many rights not up for grabs for a year or three.

channelsurfer2

Looking at the rights angle, major omissions are the SyCo(Xfactor etc.) programming and the 4-6pm hours when The Chase is not on. I wonder will they move to put this right as a start or does TV3 also have exclusive rights to Tipping point?

flazio

It would really help if one channel or the other has the rights to all episodes of a programme rather than one series or another. Kinda sad to see Jeremy Kyle or Graham Norton on two separate channels at the same time. Imagine how much weaker TV3 and 3e would be without those repeats.

lertsnim

TV3 will lose those rights and their schedule will be empty when it happens.

channelsurfer2

IT does make it more likely that UTV/ITV will bid for the irish rights to the Ireland Six Nations matches if they are going to "strengthen the schedule" as they say.

Dodge

channelsurfer2 wrote: »

IT does make it more likely that UTV/ITV will bid for the irish rights to the Ireland Six Nations matches if they are going to "strengthen the schedule" as they say.

They'll face competition from RTE for the Irish rights though but we'll see

Harry Palmr

lertsnim wrote: »

TV3 will lose those rights and their schedule will be empty when it happens.

I doubt they'll let them go without a fight, they'll have some money to play with soon when the regulator nods through the sale to Virgin Media

lertsnim

Harry Palmr wrote: »

I doubt they'll let them go without a fight

They have already lost them. It's only a matter of waiting for the current contract to run out.

AwaitYourReply

Dodge wrote: »

The problem with his TV gig was that it didn't fit in with the rest of the ITV/UTV line up. A serious one hour chat show simply didn't belong on the channel. The quality was immaterial in many ways

UTV suffered from not holding the Irish rights to many of the most popular ITV shows such as Downton Abbey. There's really not much they can do until new rights issues come up

Oh and sport. The only reason I'd ever watch ITV

Yeah, the whole "Pat Kenny - In The Round" show concept might have done a bit better if there was an Irish indigenous channel similar in style to the likes of BBC Four, BBC 2 or even Channel 4 but any UTV/ITV concept was always gonna be an uphill battle which proved costly. The lack of publicity in advance of the start of this series was also noticeable and rather odd. Then suddenly after one or two editions went out they began promoting the show - it looked very desperate.

That said, it all looked like as if UTV Ireland channel schedulers had been making it up as they went along instead of working off solid market audience research from the outset. I mean they went on a major promo campaign to come up with a "Julian" style continuity presentation pre-broadcast of soaps like Coronation Street and Emmerdale yet I think I only saw the two continuity announcers on launch night. After that, they were only heard announcing from what I recall and it would seem that they were not retained when UTV Ireland had a soft relaunch to "You - UTV Ireland". I remember posing the question on about where was the Sports News & Business News etc; in the early days of Ireland Live News as it seemed notably missing in a whole hour of news in the 10pm bulletin. Eventually in a last ditch attempt they brought in Ger Gilroy on a Friday night. Then they decided to switch the 6:30pm bulletin back to 5:30pm but this is not always a good idea when you are up against more established competition.

TV3 tried this with The Dunphy Show a tv chat show broadcast from the Helix versus The Late Late Show while the now defunct Sky News Ireland attempted to broadcast Irish news at the same time RTÉ One were live with news and well the rest is history. Anyone that carried out proper research would have copped on to this. Look at how well Ireland AM has gone for TV3 since it's very early days - no Irish indigenous equivalent and now the show has since expanded to SAT+Sun editions too! Again, UTV Ireland wanted the easy way out with The Pulse in the hope they could beat TV3's Xposé but I reckon they should have come up with other show concepts that would be of interest to viewers here but with their own slant and provided it meets the right audience demographic the channel has a good chance of attracting - maybe off the back of the expensive soaps while audience ratings are likely to be at their highest.

iseegirls

lertsnim wrote: »

TV3 will lose those rights and their schedule will be empty when it happens.

Unsure how it would look empty? Today there is only Jeremy Kyle & The Chase on TV3 that they will lose once that ITV studios contract runs out next year.

It hardly creates a huge hole in the schedule.

AwaitYourReply

lertsnim wrote: »

They have already lost them. It's only a matter of waiting for the current contract to run out.

Yes this may be true however; TV3 appears to have been fairly clever and quite ruthless in the manner in which they managed the older editions of those same shows that UTV Ireland now have contracts to broadcast in the same broadcasting jurisdiction. TV3 ended up holding on to much of their audience share by showing the older material. I would not be at all surprised if TV3 have also been making preparations for those more challenging times ahead once the Rugby World Cup is completely finished and when they can no longer broadcast those older edition shows now bought by UTV Ireland/ITV.

When I think back to this time last year, many people (including myself) thought that TV3 were in very serious trouble in the wake of UTV Ireland getting ready to launch in Dublin with access to much of TV3's most successful contracts and ratings pullers like Coronation Street and Emmerdale etc; leaving Ballymount. Right now, I'm convinced that TV3 is here to stay not just in the short term but also the medium to long term if they continue to perform so strongly against such stiff competition.

I know TV3 should also be considering certain issues closely like for instance bringing it's TV3+1 timeshift channel and TV3 HD to a free-to-air digital platform(i.e.)Saorview however; if these additional slots are prohibitively more expensive in comparison to other digital tv platforms such as Sky Digital, UPC/Virgin Media, eircom/eir e-Vision then maybe TV3 are right and wise to hold off until a better cost structure is on offer for all parties concerned. The fact that TV3, UTV Ireland, Irish TV, Oireachtas TV, Other Channels (such as local community tv channels) have been unable to either: (1) Add additional services to complement their existing channel already broadcast in SD format (2) launch their channel on Saorview platform for the first time.

Saorview is starting to look very limited and is going nowhere fast just like DAB Radio only being available in a few cities in Ireland. People will look elsewhere at other cheaper options for high standards, a lot more variety of channels and better value overall in this rapidly changing technological age - while on that note, I must check out one of those Android TV Streaming Boxes to see if they are really any good?

JP Liz V1

I'm A Celeb looks to be on there now

So that's one show back from TV3, won't be long until UTV Ireland is on a par with ITV, 2 or 3 years should do it!

Skid X

The first episode of 'Daniel and Majella's B&B Road Trip' was a ratings winner for UTV Ireland and UTV, pulling in close to half a million viewers.

An average of 322,000 people tuned in to the show on UTV Ireland, while a further 192,000 watched it north of the border on UTV.

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/television/tv-news/daniel-and-majellas-new-show-for-utv-pulled-more-viewers-than-eastenders-34147998.html


Decent ratings for Daniel and Majella. UTV Ireland are probably looking for similar programmes for the future. 'Cake and Jumpers with Daniel O'Donnell'?

FloatingVoter

I'm sure reruns of Val Doonican will also do business for them. They will do that and I won't see a cent. It is nice to have a channel that household pets and simple folk can watch.

foxy farmer

I see its position on the Saorview listings has changed in the last few days to 51. Its now listed last even after the saorview info channel. Watching to drop out after failing to keep up the pace maybe. What a monumental flop and a waste of money it has been.

Harry Palmr

Still at 6 for me, check your list again!

Mickey Mike

On my tv rte news now was on 51, it was engineers only messing and adjusting a little so don't take any notice to what you see.
My main concert is the lack of HD channels on saorview, I have been through all this before on another thread.
Lets hope TV3, TG4 and ITV Ireland go HD in the near future.

Le_Dooner

UTV Ireland now cutting off broadcasts mid-show for adverts

iseegirls

Le_Dooner wrote: »

UTV Ireland now cutting off broadcasts mid-show for adverts

Oh what happened here? Was this in I'm a Celeb?

Skid X

iseegirls wrote: »

Oh what happened here? Was this in I'm a Celeb?

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/television/tv-news/im-a-celebrity-fans-left-hanging-as-utv-ireland-cuts-show-before-bushtucker-contestants-announced-34203841.html

UTV Ireland viewers were furious last night as the marathon opening episode of I'm a Celebrity: Get Me Out Of Here! was cut right before the contestants for the first Bushtucker Trial were announced.

It was hugely frustrating given the revelation was the climax of the two hour show. UTV Ireland apologised to viewers via Twitter last night, "Apologies to our viewers for the technical issues at the end of I'm A Celebrity. Lady Colin & Jorgie Porter will take part in the next trial".

Ouch. That won't do anything to help their beleaguered reputation.

Maybe the ITV ad break was later than planned (Still inexcusable) It's not the first time the ITV transmission network have had problems with break timings

FloatingVoter

So nobody is watching the channel - even the people running it. Although for I'm An Attention Seeking Nobody...who could blame them ?

Mickey Mike

I read reports where UTV Ireland is to be sold off again. It looks like ITV are not going to bother with it after all. Liberty Goblel is suppose to place a bid in order to buy the channel which will then merge with TV3. The Irish TV market is not big enough for two major commercial channels.

Go Harvey Go

Also News Corp has bought UTV's radio stations.

(Warning: the article below features a picture of that evil red-haired lady, the one whose initials are the same as Reckitt Benckiser's.)

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/business/news/rupert-murdochs-news-corp-buys-exutv-radio-stations-in-220m-deal-34846283.html

It's quite remarkable how UTV Media has gone from being perhaps the biggest and most successful business in Northern Ireland to non-existence in the space of 18 months. And all because the people who ran it thought it was a good idea to launch a TV channel specifically for viewers in the Republic, even though it wasn't really necessary...

lertsnim

Mickie Mike wrote: »

The Irish TV market is not big enough for two major commercial channels.

Of course it is. UTV Ireland is a failure because of the stupid belief that they could run a commercial channel off the back of two soaps.

Dodge

https://www.virginmedia.ie/about-us/press/2016/virgin-media-to-acquire-utv-ireland/

Virgin Media Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Liberty Global plc (“Liberty Global”) (NASDAQ: LBTYA, LBTYB, LBTYK, LILA and LILAK) today announced that it has entered into an agreement with ITV plc to acquire UTV Ireland, the nation’s newest free-to-air commercial broadcaster, for a purchase price of €10 million. The agreement also includes a comprehensive 10 year output deal for Ireland for ITV produced programming. The purchase price is expected to be funded through existing liquidity.

The proposed transaction follows the successful acquisition of TV3 Group last year and is further testament to the confidence Virgin Media has in the Irish TV programming and production sectors. On completion of the acquisition, UTV Ireland will become part of Virgin Media which will be an essential step to securing the channel’s long term future.

UTV Ireland is a general entertainment free-to-air channel which is available on Virgin Media, eir Vision, Vodafone, Sky and Saorview. It offers compelling content such as Emmerdale and Coronation Street as well as live streaming and catch-up services and its UTV Player is available across a variety of devices.

Skid X

Mickie Mike wrote: »

I read reports where UTV Ireland is to be sold off again. It looks like ITV are not going to bother with it after all. Liberty Goblel is suppose to place a bid in order to buy the channel which will then merge with TV3. The Irish TV market is not big enough for two major commercial channels.

That has been confirmed now, sold to Virgin Media for just €10 million

ITV couldn't wait to get rid of that turkey


https://twitter.com/SineadCrowley/status/752537951599464448?lang=en

iseegirls

That was quick.

So the question is now - keep it going, and move the programmes that TV3 had over to UTV Ireland like The X Factor and BGT. Or go back 2 years, and merge the two back and create a bigger competition for RTE1.

AMKC

iseegirls wrote: »

That was quick.

So the question is now - keep it going, and move the programmes that TV3 had over to UTV Ireland like The X Factor and BGT. Or go back 2 years, and merge the two back and create a bigger competition for RTE1.

Why would they move programmes that are clearly popular on there main station over to one that is not popular that would be a bad move.. That would not make sense to do that.
They could reprand the UTV station maybe have a a TV3 movie station or a 3e+1 or TV3 reality station maybe for all them nasty cheap shows that people with no life of there own like to watch.

Mr.Nice Guy

I really hope they scrap this pitiful channel.

I'd love things to go back to the way they were with the original UTV that folks north of the border have. Then I could get to see Roy Keane as a pundit again instead of endless repeats of Lewis and all that other sh*te.

Skid X

Just as an example of why nobody watches this station, on Saturday at 7pm they begin a full repeat run of ... the 2012 series of Dancing on Ice

A full two hour showing of Episode 1 at 7pm, then an anxious wait of 30 minutes before Phillip and Holly return to introduce the Skate Off

I doubt if even the most hardcore reality junky would sit through all of that, even if they have forgotten who won that series.

iseegirls

Skid X wrote: »

Just as an example of why nobody watches this station, on Saturday at 7pm they begin a full repeat run of ... the 2012 series of Dancing on Ice

A full two hour showing of Episode 1 at 7pm, then an anxious wait of 30 minutes before Phillip and Holly return to introduce the Skate Off

I doubt if even the most hardcore reality junky wouldn't sit through all of that, even if they have forgotten who won that series.

That is ridiculous. I cannot believe they've gone that route. Who makes these decisions?

Vic_08

Mr.Nice Guy wrote: »

I really hope they scrap this pitiful channel.

I'd love things to go back to the way they were with the original UTV that folks north of the border have. Then I could get to see Roy Keane as a pundit again instead of endless repeats of Lewis and all that other sh*te.

That is the one thing that will definitely not happen. VM are not going to broadcast UTV-NI on their network in competition with their own channels showing a lot of the same content.

The only sensible solution now is to return the flagship programming to TV3, combine the news production (ie close UTVI news) and either quietly disappear UTVI or run it as a second repeats/junk channel alongside 3e. They won't have anywhere near enough content to run 2 first-run channels.

I am assuming The "UTV" name will have to go, these deals usually allow a limited time period to keep the brand before giving it one of their own, if money is tight they could always dig up the old "Virgin 1" idents.

Mickey Mike

Vic_08 wrote: »

That is the one thing that will definitely not happen. VM are not going to broadcast UTV-NI on their network in competition with their own channels showing a lot of the same content.

The only sensible solution now is to return the flagship programming to TV3, combine the news production (ie close UTVI news) and either quietly disappear UTVI or run it as a second repeats/junk channel alongside 3e. They won't have anywhere near enough content to run 2 first-run channels.

I am assuming The "UTV" name will have to go, these deals usually allow a limited time period to keep the brand before giving it one of their own, if money is tight they could always dig up the old "Virgin 1" idents.

I agree with what you write, Now let's hope TV3 and UTV Ireland merge and form a HD channel on Saorview, if they don't do that well then I hope they fall on their ass.