We need your help now
Support from readers like you keeps The Journal open.
You are visiting us because we have something you value. Independent, unbiased news that tells the truth. Advertising revenue goes some way to support our mission, but this year it has not been enough.
If you've seen value in our reporting, please contribute what you can, so we can continue to produce accurate and meaningful journalism. For everyone who needs it.
Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
By continuing, you are indicating that you accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
THERE COULD BE a new Irish TV channel on the air in a little over 12 months time.
UTV Media – which runs the popular Northern Ireland channel as well as a raft of Irish and UK radio stations – has announced plans launch a new Dublin-based service.
An application to the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland for a Content Provision Contract was submitted today.
The move follows the signing of an agreement giving UTV exclusive Irish broadcasting rights for ITV Studios programmes, including popular soaps Coronation Street and Emmerdale, from early 2015.
Both programmes — along with other ITV shows like ‘Jeremy Kyle’ — are currently staples of the TV3 schedule.
UTV Media has previously been linked with a possible takeover bid of TV3.
The new channel will be based in Dublin. According to the company, it will also have “additional newsgathering and reporting presence in Cork, Galway, Waterford and Limerick”.
UTV runs six radio stations in the Republic of Ireland: FM104 and Q102 in Dublin, Cork’s 96FM/C103, the Drogheda-based LMFM and Live 95FM in Limerick. Its UK stations include TalkSport, which is the country’s number one commercial speech broadcaster.
According to Group CEO John McCann: “The audience in Ireland has known the UTV brand for more than 50 years through our station for Northern Ireland and we’re delighted to announce our plans for a new dedicated channel for viewers in the Republic of Ireland.
“UTV Media already has a very strong presence in the Republic of Ireland employing more than 300 people in our various businesses including our market leading Irish radio stations. We look forward to building on that success with the launch of a new Irish TV channel.
“After incurring start-up costs in 2014 we expect the new channel to breakeven in its first full year of operation and then move into profit from 2016.
“Today’s announcement represents a strong vote of confidence in Irish broadcasting and our investment in the Irish economy.”
UTV Media says its planning to create 100 jobs as the new venture launches.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
TV3 won’t be happy.
Will we get to see jane veitch back on the screen
It could be crap but at least I won’t have to pay for its crapness. Best of luck to them
They might get our coronation street but they’ll never take our xpose
Pray for Glenda
Unless it has a permanent fixture on Sky they will struggle. At the moment to get any ITV or UTV channel on Sky you need to tune manually , cant record and it’s not part of the main planner. This is a key reason why TV3 is so successful with broadcasting ITV shows.
That would be because they don’t have a licence to broadcast in the Republic. Would be lifted if they did and be available across all platforms – Digital, freeview, streaming
Whats Sky? Oh something you pay for extra on top of the normal channels that you can recieve free by satellite.
and recordable too Tiger.
They must have. UTV and ITV 2, 3 and 4 are on UPC. I think there’s some dispute with Sky.
That’s for Tiger’s comment below.
Jeremy Kyle is a load of sh@!e
Who would have thought that UTV would be the ones to herald a United Ireland
Who would have thought that Jeremy Kyle would be a keystone of United Ireland?
A united Ireland under British rule
You might think that Steve but the DNA test came back negative, turns out we’ve been sleeping with Germany behind their back.
Yep, it’s no happy accident that ITV and BBC are easy to access in Ireland, they have thoroughly anglicised us. I always found it amazing that RTE didn’t ever kick up a fuss about the situation.
mmmmm I think the rush of American cultural Imperialism is the one to watch…as we rush off to MacDonalds, KFC etc etc
All our channels should be shown in the north get them used to a united Ireland
Excellent Steve.
UTV Media isn’t British.
Instead of being subservient, it’s actually major shareholder in ITV, meaning it they are partly under Irish & Scottish rule.
Hopefully the death of TV3, absolute abysmal station and presenters.
Give me Julian anyday over that awful gob***** Martin King.
Don’t be worrying yourselves a bit about presenters, haven’t we got Doheee O Shi.. and Miriam of the hundred babies I’m in great shape, waiting to take on the best of them.
Could not agree more, absolutely awful excuse of an irish broadcaster, how TV3 survived this long is beyond me. Paul Cantwell might be back in employment and Alan Hughes might be glad to hear of an opening on telly bingo.
I welcome competition but Jeremy Kyle won’t be the most innovative decision they can make.
We need a media willing to report on the news.
Always had a gripe with utv as they won’t as much as give the Irish weather forecast for the south considering if someone fa– in the North rte is running it daily.
Hence it’s called UTV – Ulster Television.
33% of Ulster is in the Republic QWERTY
As our own state broadcaster cover a lot of news inside the six counties the least utv could do is read out the weather forecast for the south as well as major news stories
@Michael. Strictly speaking 33.333333333333333333333333333333 (infinite number of threes) percent of the number of counties in Ulster are in the Republic. I’m aware of that. I’m aware also that they provide the weather for those counties too. They reason they probably don’t do a forecast for the “deep south” is because the unionists/loyalists would go nuts over it and riot or something.
They should just buy TV3 , both show the same crap
My Mam told me that Julian off UTV was going out with Joe Dolan for years
We need a TV station that report the news in an honest and unbiased manner, a station that reports for the people and is not controlled by a cartel of politicians and the Police.
An Phoblacht TV?
@Emily. GREAT IDEA..
This place need a bit of “Belfaust Efficiauncy”
TV3 would be fecked because UTV broadcasts in HD, TV3′s coverage of football is pathetic because it’s not HD.. Also if UTV own Talksport, making that available to Irish listeners would be a godsend
Add Brian Kerr droning on with match commentary and it’s a hard watch
Very mono tone
It’s about time we have new TV stations competing with each other. 3 Irish stations in Ireland is hardly enough?!
More drivel. And I thought fm104 was bad, now I know why
Rte 1, Rte 2, TV 3, TG4. Makes 4.
and 3E makes 5
And 3e, but that’s not any different from TV3 so I don’t know if it counts.
RTE is counted as one as its the same company, 3e is part of TV3.
RTE, TV3, TG4.. that’s 3.
TG4 serves a very very small audience unless it’s showing Pro 12 when it has a bigger audience almost all of who will spend the 80 minutes complaining about it being in Irish! In the interests of equality they should release a TG4 with English too to serve the majority of the island.
TG4 has by far the best Irish historical programmes and the best world documentaries. If you are into Irish history then TG4 is an excellent station, plus they support grassroots GAA in a massive way. For its budget it’s a way better station than anything RTE has to offer!
If you use that logic Byyys the UK only has about 6 or 7 channels as they are all part of conglomerate groups…
TG4 in English? Defeats the point of an Irish language station, doesn’t it?
@Bilbo Baggins; Logically Ireland has 8 channels;
RTE 1, RTE+1. RTE 2, RTE2 HD, TV3, 3e, TG4, TG4 HD. was just talking about the main 3.
Yes, TG4 has great programmes. I just wish there was the option to switch off the English subtitles. That would be a great way to learn Irish. If you recorded a programme you could try first without subtitles and then with them. And subtitles on the Nuacht would be nice as sometimes there’s a piece on there that’s not on the RTE News.
As long as that Neil Prendeville won’t be on it…
Crazy idea, have they not considered just renaming UTV to IrelandTV? UTV is available throughout the Republic already and let’s be honest the same rubbish programmes will just be cut and paste into the new schedule. Move along now, Nothing to see here…
UTV is not as available as you. It’s not on the biggest platform in ireland sky. Sure you can tune it in manually but that’s not the same. The can also double advertising revenue.
Tv3 will be fecked. Hard to compete with rte for BBC programs. Will Jeremy Kyle be replaced with channel 5s big brother?
Maybe it might encourage them to move away from the lowest common denominator of tv then. There is plenty of shows from UK/US/CAN/AUS/NZ/RSA that can be purchased with just Irish rights. And it also might encourage them to have a bash working with some hone grown production companies, we have the talent in the country just need people to take the risk with their money.
Wonder who is going to be first to jump ship from tv3 to join them?
Would not be in a hurry in giving up a job tv3 look at what happened to Sky only a few short years ago.
Loosing the ITV shows might actually be good for TV3 ,they have produced some reasonably good Irish content in their time , the loss of the ITV content might see TV3 produce or commission more of its own shows.
Hard to say but might be good in the long run.
Like what? That drama they shot in Galway was actually unwatchable. The only thing they have is those murder investigation programmes which are obviously cheap to make. Apart from that and throwing Vincent into a studio at the end of the night for a rant, I don’t see what else they’ve made. Their news coverage is also terrible.
Sorry Colin this is a death knell for TV3. All of their revenue comes from their flagship shows which are all from ITV. XFactor etc. going to another station will literally wipe them out. They should actually try and negotiate a takeover with UTV because there isn’t room for the two of them and UTV will control the content.
Yeah I am inclined to agree that some of what they produced themselves has not been great , but what they are paying ITV to show these programs cant be small , there are several talented production companies based in Ireland that with any money at all could produce something half decent , the problem Irish production companies face is that for TV stations it is far easier to simply import top end programs form other english speaking countries than it is to take a gamble on something new and untested produced in Ireland.
After all , every production company in Ireland rejected Father Ted as something an Irish audience would have no interest in , it took Chanel 4 in the UK to make what is now seen as an iconic Irish comedy , it was similar with Mrs Brown , if it was not for the backing of the BBC Mrs Brown is another series that would never have been made.
There is no shortage of talent in this country , but it rarely gets the attention it deserves because of imported content , it is for that reason I think TV3 loosing its ITV produced content COULD be a good thing if approached in the right way , weather TV3 will actually do that , well thats another matter.
I hear school around the corner is making a comeback!
The xpose ladies have already been seen wandering around Belfast in the hope of getting a new job
They’re a bunch of insufferable Dubs that think they’re Hollywood celebrities because they appear on Irish TV. In fact, all Irish television “celebrities”/”personalities” have the same attitude.
Every time i pick up the herald i get so annoyed at it being full of them that i punch it then set it on fire, then punch it again
One more station I’ll never watch
Now that’s what I call really sad, get out into the garden and talk to the flowers instead, not more tv.
Grumpy.
My flowers won’t answer me, snobby bastards
If they did…Alice in Wonderland time!
If they did, Barbara you’d have an Alice in Wonderland moment!
It will be interesting to see what UTV will do in Dublin beyond their ITV-based content. I can’t really remember them producing any programming themselves beyond news/factual shows.
Hard to see what they will add and I hope it’s not just further dilution of already quite poor quality on the Irish tv scene.
So if you take all the ITV/UTV Programming from TV3/3e and move it to this new “ITV-Ireland” channel….what is TV3 going to show.. Multiple daily re-runs of Ireland:AM and Midday and be like RTE News Now.
UTV will more then likely just buy TV3. Why would they risk the costs of setting up a new operation in the Republic when they can enter the market though an existing player such as TV3. By taking ITV’s content off them they’ve just lowered the price they’ll need to pay. This announcement will be a negotiating tactic. The jobs figure is spin as they already exist and amalgamating the current UTV Dublin news team with TV3′s news team will probably lead to redundancies.
A chance for the government to up the broadcasting tax… yippee
so can we collapse RTE into TG4 get rid of the license see and sell it or run it centrally on a modest budget or will I still have to pay the luvvie tax?
UTV is garbage and this new station is going to be even worse simple as……………
I always thought tv3 was owned by uk channel 5 who in turn are owned by itv so maybe this announcement is a smokescreen and a amalgamation is on the cards for utv/tv3
Thats tv3 down the pan …..
Oh joy. Another station showing UTV garbage
I thought UTV owned TV3, this is quite a surprise. When I say surprise I mean surprise as in picking up food poisoning alongside a cold. Its just another godawful channel that nobody with any taste watches.
Dats tv3 gone down da pan so
Now that utv is breaking down south of the border, what are the chances of bbc northern ireland will follow suit?
Sounds Fab!! Same shite, different provider. How is this going to improve anything?
Live Web TV is the way to go not more terrestrial repeats. Look at http://www.cavantv.com 7 Web shows every week viewed by 120 countries any time, any place that’s the way TV is going
Will definitely be a merger with TV3.
have your say