GAA sport coverage on saorview

icdg wrote: »

The GAA don't care about the punditry. What they do care about is creating a market for the media rights. They don't want to revert to a situation where RTÉ can "name their price" for the media rights. Its in their interests that there's a bidding war and therefore that TV3 remain interested in broadcasting GAA.

I can eventually get over the punditry if they lock up Mike Finnerty and remove all the cliches from his vocabulary.

My main gripe is the basic 1983 poor standard definition picture quality that is being offered by the alternative broadcaster.

The GAA themselves have long maintained that money is not their motivation for the rights breakup. Even taking that with the pinch of salt that it requires (given they reduced the games from 50-40 because of gate numbers), saying diversity has been good for the game would simply be untrue given the massive chasm that exists between the eventual product produced by one broadcaster over the other. One provides an enjoyable viewing experience, the other is cheap and tacky and poor in picture quality. The minimum quality standards that should be enforced are HD given the small number of games involved (40). It is not as if the money generated through advertising by these rights is prohibitive!

The next 3 year deal is up for renewal at the end of this year, so the OP's questions are timely. They need to get the International rights sorted. 1.5m was not enough. But before they sort that they must put in basic standards expected.

Of course the problem behind the HD/PQ issue is bigger than the rights themselves and its all to do with having a commercial broadcaster that refuses to pay for anything. That probably ties in to your question about interactivity etc.

icdg wrote: »

I'm still wondering why, it being 2013, all three Irish TV broadcasters are still completely adverse to using the red button - aside from for the catch-up services on UPC, it isn't used by any Irish broadcaster on any platform.

TV3 wouldn't do the Irish commentary at all given the choice, it was not the original plan but the first year they had the rights there was a bit of an outcry when this was learnt from the Irish language lobby and TV3 hastly threw the game on 3e with Irish commentary and they've done it ever since, perhaps prefering to pay the relatively cheap price for the commentary than deal with the outcry.

Broadcasters do not need to use an interactive service like the red button to provide alternative language streams. Alternative language streams are actually already provided through narrative/audio description services on certain programming. It could have been easily be done as an extra Irish/Eng audio language stream without having a needless simulcast on 3e.

Do you mean that a station could offer 2 games/one providing X game and Y as an alternative ?

If such a situation arose right now the answer is probably no. There is no further room on the Mux as the full 24 megs are utilised. The stat muxing going on at the moment is compressing the feck out of anything non HD.

So has the fight over how much Tv3 are willing to contribute to the carriage bills ever been resolved ? Given that was in relation to the carriage of 2 SD stations, one wonders how many years it will take for them to agree to HD carriage!

Given the €75m+ that RTE plowed into the DVB-T infrastructure that no-one wants to pay for, we now have a situation were a second mux is required for further HD/interactivity etc. It is also required to help the stifled and compressed Mux 1.

So as long as TV3 have GAA rights and the current situation continues with the Saorview platform, we are doomed to 1983 broadcast picture quality output for sports on that channel and TG4. People need to be told to get off the platform or play ball at this stage.

ICDG: One final thought, given that this is fairly topical with the rights for 2014-16 going out for tender in October, it might be interesting to see what others might think outside of tech geeks. I am thinking the GAA forum for a temp move.