Eclipse?

Blade

I'd like to say that I think it was an absolute disgrace the way RTE and "Astronomy Ireland" went about the whole eclipse thing, RTE's content is crap enough as it is, you'd think they'd take the oppertunity to cover a once in a lifetime event that happened right under our feet.



So where do Astronomy Ireland and RTE decide to cover the event from? Dublin.. very clever the 90% band of totality, a once in a lifetime experience and these muppets won't move out of Dublin to get 97% totality from Kerry and 100% totality from a ship a few miles off the Southern Coast which could have made us the first humans to see the event in it's full glory ie. the circular corona and diamond ring effect and total darkness, The BBC, ITV and Sky arranged planes to cover this event and RTE couldn't even arrange a trip to Kerry let alone a ship to take paying people out while they got their TV coverage out of it.

When interviewing a member of Astronomy Ireland in the Pheonix Park after the event the RTE reporter asked him "Well what was it like?" and the man replies "well it didn't go very dark here but I spose down in Kerry it would have got a lot darker as they had 97% totality" If I was the reporter I'da said "So why did you arrange all this here you f*cking muppets!!!!"

Regards,
Blade

Cloud

The RTE coverage was _quite_ pathetic.

I taped some of the coverage from a number of stations, BBC 1's was probably one of the best, Sky News wasn't bad (but dragged out as usual until the bitter end and well after), Channel 4 was the usual silly Big Breakfast stuff (here's a new age hippy, oh sorry you don't like to be called that, oh well let's make fun of you anyway), TV3 missed the boat as well, starting broadcasts of some silly Australian soap at 11.30 when they could have been on air 30 minutes earlier and covered the event, TV5 (cinque) wasn't bad :-) considering it was in French, even EuroNews on TnaG was more interesting than the RTE coverage.

RTE has some muppet physicist who when asked what did the eclipse mean to him he whined "personally it doesn't mean much to me as it's not really my field but blah blah blah" - like who wants to listen to these so-called professional experts if they don't give a damn, or some guy going on about boring eclipse folklore from years ago.

Too right Blade, RTE have gotten away with this kind of Dublin-only coverage for too long now, unfortunately the "new blood" TV3 made no effort either.

J.
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mewso

Well done RTE for saving money when they could have wasted time, effort and dosh covering the moon passing between us and the sun. I want daily coverage of sunset from now on. It goes completely dark every evening. Bloody amazing.

M

Kali

and usually for a tad bit longer than 1 minute as well..
i didn't see a thing in Ireland.. I reckon RTE just thought to themselves.. ah **** it nobody really cares so we'll show some highlights at 11 at night (hmm maybe they just got the times wrong.)

Hecate

its a once in a lifetime event, "but dont look at it"

help im seeing spots.

Hobbes

It aint a once in lifetime event, unless like RTE you have no plans to go to where it's taking place.

Next one is in South Africa in 2001 ? (thought there was 2 a year).

Local news made a mess a lot better, they give the wrong times out of when you could see it here (70% totality) and most muppets missed by an hour (I just slept in, like it was dark to begin with).

Blade

Hobbes: It was a once in a lifetime experience for Irish people, a lot of people would have taken a day trip on a ferry from here but I don't think they'll want to go to South Africa

Anyway I since found out that Ireland.com (Irish Times) organised a Ferry to sit just off France and film the event for live telecast over the NET, they also took a **** load of people with them giving them the oppertunity I was talking about. Anyway I don't think anyone would have bothered watching it over the net with the kind of connections most ppl have here and that was my point that our own national TV station (who we pay our license fees too) could have got up off their arses and showed something interesting for a change instead of the usual programming for the over 60's.

Blade