TV Coverage this weekend Pro 12

OldRio

Too much time on my hands but anyhoots.

Interesting coverage including a 5 hour marathon by TG4 (fair play to them)

Friday
Cannot find any coverage of Edinburgh v Ulster match.
7.00pm BBC2W and BBC Red Button Dragons v Ospreys

Saturday
3.15pm TG4 Aironi v Connacht
5.55pm TG4 and S4C Cardiff v Leinster
8.00 RTE2 Munster v Treviso

Shock, horror. Hold the back page.
RTE2 showing live Irish Rugby teams on a Saturday, instead of highlights of a foreign soccer league ????
Not as simple as that. No priemership soccer this weekend.

CatFromHue

RTE2 have shown live games on a Saturday before, usually the kick off is at 6 and then the Premiership would be on after the game.

justsomebloke

dragons V ospreys is on bbc wales on friday night for anyone interested

http://www.rabodirectpro12.com/matchcentre/schedule.php

icdg

CatFromHue wrote: »

RTE2 have shown live games on a Saturday before, usually the kick off is at 6 and then the Premiership would be on after the game.

Back in August the France v Ireland pre-World Cup match was shown live and was a 7:30pm kick off IIRC. That was the first day of the FA Premier League season and Premier Soccer Saturday was shown after 10pm that day, which I think is the latest it has been broadcast all season. The problem for RTÉ is that if Premier Soccer Saturday is shown too late, viewers will just watch Match of the Day instead.

Digifriendly

Radio Ulster said there was no live TV coverage by BBC Alba of Edinburgh vs Ulster due to contractual reasons. Wonder do they mean that they're cash strapped?

seanin4711

my beloved Connacht on the telly and would you believe they are in Italy!
nice one TG4,dont mind paying my TV licence for once!(thats if we win of course!!!)

icdg

Digifriendly wrote: »

Radio Ulster said there was no live TV coverage by BBC Alba of Edinburgh vs Ulster due to contractual reasons. Wonder do they mean that they're cash strapped?

BBC Alba's budget is about £15m, only about half of which comes from the BBC, the other half being from MG Alba which is effectively a subsidiary of Ofcom though it is funded by the Scottish government.

To put BBC Alba into a wider context, the overall BBC income is about £5b. S4C's is less than £100m, RTÉ's is about €372m.

Either way, BBC Alba is run on a shoestring. What the Pro 12 in Scotland really needs for the better funded BBC Scotland to replace BBC Alba as rights holders.

CIARAN_BOYLE

Has anyone got a link to radio ulster MW (all thats on my radio or digi box is the FM station) that can be accessed in the republic? Thanks

Eoin

I really miss Setanta having the rights

Eoin

Eoin wrote: »

I really miss Setanta having the rights

:P As long as its not excusive rights :P I prefer the rabo been on freesat and saorview personally :P

whitleydonal

edinburgh V Ulster not on the television:mad: I have given up on this mickey mouse competition and I guess mickey mouse coverage

Eoin

warlikedave wrote: »

Eoin wrote: »

I really miss Setanta having the rights

:P As long as its not excusive rights :P I prefer the rabo been on freesat and saorview personally :P

The coverage in Irish channels has been so poor that I'd happily pay for exclusive rights - I got setanta for the RWC and it was worth every cent.

Eoin

Eoin wrote: »

The coverage in Irish channels has been so poor that I'd happily pay for exclusive rights - I got setanta for the RWC and it was worth every cent.

rte hasnt been too bad but tg4 need to set up a red button commentary service in english like s4c does. setanta are not worth paying for plus alot of us cant afford to do so. I think the scrum V coverage of the welsh derby tonight has been very good. setanta requires a upc sub or sky subscription and then an setanta sub (on the sky platform) for alot of people :P who dont have access to UPC analogue or the eircom customer free setanta ireland streaming on the eircom site.

Long may it be free :P

Eoin

An English commentary option on TG4 would be nice (I moved to Ireland later on in life, so dont have a word of Irish), but I don't know if that would be the way TG4 want to operate.

RTE coverage is fine - once they actually cover a game. But that seems rare enough. For some reason, TG4 seem to cover most the Leinster games; or on a few occasions they've not been covered at all.

I dread to think what would happen if the Heineken cup went FTA.

Eoin

Eoin wrote: »

An English commentary option on TG4 would be nice (I moved to Ireland later on in life, so dont have a word of Irish), but I don't know if that would be the way TG4 want to operate.

RTE coverage is fine - once they actually cover a game. But that seems rare enough. For some reason, TG4 seem to cover most the Leinster games; or on a few occasions they've not been covered at all.

I dread to think what would happen if the Heineken cup went FTA.

It was free to air over here before sky got it (4 to 6 years ago) - good coverage of every irish province in their groups and knock outs. It was good now. RTE had the rights tho but if it does go free to air again i can see TG4 trying to get some of those rights now that they have the highlights rights at the moment

Lets recongise the fact that its not gonna happen though - no one can outbid BskyB for rights at the moment.

OldRio

Yes I agree, well done TG4. Great to have FREE to air coverage.

decisions

Tbh, it's a bit annoying having it on tg4 but at the same time it's free, and it's doing my irish some good, you never know being able to talk about rugby as Gaeilge might come in handy during my lc…

I would like to have all games shown though and I would have liked to see the ulster game last night, and I would have thought between RTE, TG4 and BBC NI that someone would show it. There are way to many of the 4 provinces games that are not being shown at all this year.

Considering it all I wouldn't mind paying for a top quality service from sky or a set up similar th the world cup setanta coverage if I had to, but I can deal with what we have now for the time being at least…

justsomebloke

Truthfully I think it's great, yes it could be a lot better but between all the stations we generally end up with a bigger % of games shown then the premiership in England. Given the limited budgets of the stations involved that's not to bad

OldRio

justsomebloke wrote: »

Truthfully I think it's great, yes it could be a lot better but between all the stations we generally end up with a bigger % of games shown then the premiership in England. Given the limited budgets of the stations involved that's not to bad

100% agree
Also to watch all the live coverage of the premiership in the UK. You would need to subscribe to 2 seperate providers. Sky and ESPN.

JRant

Good to have it free to air, my lack of irish is frustrating on TG4 and an english option would be nice. Seems RTE show mostly Munster and TG4 Leinster, strange as i'd have thought they're are more irish speakers in munster than leinster. Anyway, hope it continues to improve.

CatFromHue

JRant wrote: »

Good to have it free to air, my lack of irish is frustrating on TG4 and an english option would be nice. Seems RTE show mostly Munster and TG4 Leinster, strange as i'd have thought they're are more irish speakers in munster than leinster. Anyway, hope it continues to improve.

I think last season it was the other way around with more Leinster games on RTE than Munster. It just seems to be the way the games are falling.

irishbucsfan

You'd think with RTE based om Donnybrook and TG4 based in Galway there'd be some agreement between the channels, but obviously not.

JRant

CatFromHue wrote: »

JRant wrote: »

Good to have it free to air, my lack of irish is frustrating on TG4 and an english option would be nice. Seems RTE show mostly Munster and TG4 Leinster, strange as i'd have thought they're are more irish speakers in munster than leinster. Anyway, hope it continues to improve.

I think last season it was the other way around with more Leinster games on RTE than Munster. It just seems to be the way the games are falling.

You could be right about the scheduling alright. Seemed about 50/50 last year on rte, could well be wrong on that though. Either way its good to have any coverage on free to air. Great to see so many young faces in the crowds as well and having it on the box can only improve its popularity.

EmeraldNK

I think TG4 would have an English commentary function if they could afford it. They're mostly funded by TV licence fees though, and since that's split with RTÉ (somewhere around the 85:15% line), and because RTÉ have to pay Gráinne Seoige and Ryan Tubridy, TG4 gets relatively little money to improve their coverage.

I must say though, they do VERY well with what they've got. I can only imagine just how much better they'd be if they received better funding. I personally quite like the commentary as Gaeilge though, so no big deal.

Digifriendly

justsomebloke wrote: »

Truthfully I think it's great, yes it could be a lot better but between all the stations we generally end up with a bigger % of games shown then the premiership in England. Given the limited budgets of the stations involved that's not to bad

I agree. Only drawback is lack of regular highlights programme (similar to ITV's 'Premiership Rugby') showing action from all the matches. STV do this but don't always show all the tries from games not featuring Scottish sides and as we know its a pain to record from STV using Sky while BBC2W's 'Scrum V' usually concentrate on Welsh teams' matches.

JustinDee

EmeraldNK wrote: »

I think TG4 would have an English commentary function if they could afford it. They're mostly funded by TV licence fees though, and since that's split with RTÉ (somewhere around the 85:15% line), and because RTÉ have to pay Gráinne Seoige and Ryan Tubridy, TG4 gets relatively little money to improve their coverage.

I must say though, they do VERY well with what they've got. I can only imagine just how much better they'd be if they received better funding. I personally quite like the commentary as Gaeilge though, so no big deal.

Have no Irish myself but from looking at the panel on TG4, its obvious to anyone that they're doing just what they're there to do ie. talk about the game and not hog the limelight, gurn when someone else speaks or state points that are contradictory to those previously said.

totallegend

EmeraldNK wrote: »

I think TG4 would have an English commentary function if they could afford it. They're mostly funded by TV licence fees though, and since that's split with RTÉ (somewhere around the 85:15% line), and because RTÉ have to pay Gráinne Seoige and Ryan Tubridy, TG4 gets relatively little money to improve their coverage.

Worth every penny of it. Every penny.

I'm really enjoying TG4's coverage of the Rabo league, I have fairly good Irish so I don't mind the commentary issue, besides, I watched the Leinster game on TG4 on Sunday, then switched to RTE for the Munster game. Let's just say I'd have been much happier if Ryle had been commentating in a language I couldn't understand.

Marcusm

Am I the only one who watches games on TG4 with radio commentary?

Blut2

Marcusm wrote: »

Am I the only one who watches games on TG4 with radio commentary?

I've tried that but found they dont always sync up perfectly. A 5 second delay on either side can make the whole thing quite annoying.

profitius

TG4 players seems to be always mixed up. I can't find the Leinster Cardiff match anywhere. The Connacht Aironi match was on it a few days ago but that seems to have disappeared now.

CIARAN_BOYLE

Blut2 wrote: »

I've tried that but found they dont always sync up perfectly. A 5 second delay on either side can make the whole thing quite annoying.

Assuming the TV is ahead of the radio and you are watching with digital you can pause live TV. You can also pause radio if you are listening online.

That said I am happy enough to listen to Irish commentary on TG4

Blut2

CIARAN_BOYLE wrote: »

Assuming the TV is ahead of the radio and you are watching with digital you can pause live TV. You can also pause radio if you are listening online.

That said I am happy enough to listen to Irish commentary on TG4

The radio was running a few seconds ahead the last couple of times I tried I think. Can you pause on the RTE radio player? I thought I remembered trying that and it just resuming the feed a few seconds later when you unpaused (ie, not delaying it, just skipping forward).

Marcusm

Agree that this can happen. Last weekend, radio via iphone app and TG4 on sky hd box (type of box makes a diff) were well aligned.