TG4, Cula4, TG4 +1

Would love to see it as a channel even an player brought to you by TG4 and Screen Ireland, Cine4 has a new logo.

What of the 3 years after that? What are we talking about in terms of services.

We aren't talking about a new TV channel.

A news section on TG4 website (something that they should have, even if it is just a copy of Nuacht RTÉ), Extra news programming, an additional hour of TV news, additional episodes of 7lá.

The FOMC only suggested editorial control, RTÉ could still continue to fund the programme, indeed the head of Nuacht RTÉ for TV could simply move over to become staff at TG4.

As for the following : -

Speaking earlier on RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta's Adhmhaidin programme, TG4 Director General Alan Esslemont said it is evident from SIPTU that their members in Nuacht TG4's studio in Co Galway are very unhappy about working conditions.

"The studio is falling apart," he said. "And if it were not for the investment that I made when I arrived, the studio would have fallen apart."

He seems to be blaming RTÉ for the lack of maintenance of TG4 studios. While asking for an extra 2m to update equipment, surely that his is job as part of his current funding and previous funding.

RTÉ currently spend €7 on TG4 programming, most of this is news and current affairs, he wants 11m to cover this.

I don't see anything extra being provided or any ideas given as to what TG4 will offer the audience.

If it is extra visual content then I can understand (7lá moving to a 4 day week, Nuacht TG4 going out for an hour).

None of this is address in the article, rather the relationship between RTÉ, TG4 and the Unions.

TBH the extra money to TG4 in the last budget had nothing to do with CULA4. TG4 had already decided on that regardless of the budget increase. And I think that their is some value to be got from CULA4, though I would prefer if they either remove the programming from TG4 or had Cula4 as a +1 service to TG4's CULA4 rather than a simucast. I would have also have liked to have seen CINE4 rather than +1.

The additional funding must come with extra commitments (not a full time channel). I assume one extra commitment would have to be a news service on TG4.ie, but really they'd need more than that.

IMO if The Gove did give 17m to TG4 it'd really would need to merge with RnaG at least there would be some Economies of scale for the news service.

Yeah it is, I wouldn't mind if they mixed it with an Irish presenters but also they have really reduced the amount of links to programmes, I'd not be surprised if idents are carried before The Golden Girls with no Irish Language continuity announcement. Also at this point the selection of programmes is poor and repeative. At this point they have repeated all episodes at least 5 times if not more.

They should have at least replace them with newer programming such as Friends, Malcom in the Middle and Monk.

TG4 to me has fallen from grace, yes they still make some good programming but their imports are poor, and while I understand that imports are cheap and that these shows come from the same distributor as the cartoons that are Dubbed, I wonder how necessary they are considering that most of the animation shown on TG4 are European imports.

I love to know the audience numbers for the repeats, perhaps when they first appeared about 10 years ago it might have been a novelty but at this point, surely repeats of your own back catalogue would be better used.

No this is not true, there is no requirement for either RTÉ or TG4 not to spend money on imports using public revenue.

TG4 from 1999 to 2008-ish had a deal with Warner Brothers hence you had alot of HBO programming, TG4 had bought these shows mainly for Cula4, hence the dubbing of Batman and other DC animate serials at the time. This helped TG4 with both children's and non-Irish language programming. This happened at the time to be around 3million, which was of set by commercial revenue.

I am sure their are other American programming packages (with similar programming) open to TG4 beyond the one they currently have and have had for the last number of years.

Annual reports for both RTÉ and TG4 have yet to be published.

€5.2 million in 2022, €3.4m is advertising, they spend €3.6m on Dubbed/Acquired/subtitling, so not sure how that is broken down for Acquired programming.