The Virgin Media Television thread

iseegirls

Coronation Street and Emmerdale are constantly being shifted around the schedules. It's nice that ITV have plenty of live sport, but not sure how viewers can keep up with whether Emmerdale starts at 7 or 7.30 these days. Same with Coronation Street, and might make it hard to watch live.

You'll still see that "Power Hour" block moved when Britain's Got Talent and I'm A Celeb is on.

Jan 2026 is a long time away, strange that it's not being done a bit sooner.

What VM1 puts in there may depend on what ITV does with the 7.30 slot. Bradley Walsh's Breaking Dad, For The Love Of Dogs no doubt could fit in there. Putting T6OCS back into the 7pm slot seems like the most logical move however. The Chase at 6pm does well on VM2, so would transfer well to VM1 if needed.

RoTelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123138983#Comment_123138983

I wonder if the plan also means that Coro St and Emmers will take a break during BGT and IACGMOH? Rather than moving them? Unlikely but if they are cutting back.

RoTelly

https://www.the42.ie/rte-league-of-ireland-6613760-Feb2025/

I'd argue that there are more competitors in the market and VMTV taking these rights gives them the ability to grow the game for VMTV audiences, and why shouldn't they and why should RTÉ have all sports?

While RTÉ is the national public service broadcaster and should support minority sports, unfortunately soccer cannot not be consider a minority sport, so letting go of such coverage is not massively a loss on RTÉ badge of "public service media".

I'd argue that it is lack of vision from FAI that has caused many of the problem with LoI, not the coverage provided.

How much overage did any Welsh or Northern Irish broadcaster provide to their respective soccer leagues?

deezell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123140704#Comment_123140704

I seen a Welsh league match on a satellite channel once, it might have been cymru or S4C. They were playing in a pitch in what looked like a park with a road running along one side, pedestrians could stop and watch. There looked to be only a few dozen leaning over railings watching it. It made Tolka park look like the Etihad.

icdg

BBC NI is providing nearly weekly NIFL Premiership live coverage; though mostly via the iPlayer. There are apparently a small number of games on Sky Sports too.

S4C is showing weekly Cymru Premier coverage too, again mostly through their website.

I agree incidentally with the general point; there should absolutely no expectation that all domestic sporting competitions should be exclusivity screened by RTE, or even that being shown by VMTV (or TG4, or Premier for that matter) represents some sort of loss of status. This has happened in a context where one club owner is also the owner of Premier, who have a contract to run LOITV, and also where another club have picked what in my view is a pretty silly fight with RTE over tv coverage of UEFA Champions League qualifiers. It may not have been down for purely monetary reasons.

iseegirls

With Gino D'Acampo allegations coming to light yesterday by ITV, I wonder will Virgin Media pull programming related to him. Gino's Italian Escape has been shown a lot on the channel (Series 1 shown 25+ times). And then there's Road Trip which they air a lot. His version Family Fortunes hasn't been shown in 2024 and 2025. Will find out this weekend and see whether they'll pull Italian Escape.

In saying that, they continued airing seasons from The Chase Australia with host Andrew O'Keefe whom was fired in 2021 for domestic violence charges.

iseegirls

Following up on the above, Yorkshire Airport has replaced Gino's Italian Escape on tomorrows schedule.

thesandeman

It's that the magician guy doing the Superbowl?

thesandeman

I hope the match is better than the singing.

deezell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123153352#Comment_123153352

It wasn't, apparently.

sumach

The league of Ireland kicks off tonight, but it's blocked on the Virgin Media player, which means people with only Saorview will have to view the LOI season in poor quality sd.

dulpit

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123172144#Comment_123172144

That's very odd. Is there a rights issue at play? Seems to be shooting themselves in the foot...

decor58

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123172144#Comment_123172144

Working fine here on VMplay, on a Firestick.

sumach

Working for me too now, but Shelbourne game was delayed about 30 minutes or so due tofloodlightfailure, so maybe they set the blocked period for a set time. Will have to wait till next week to see if this is an issue.

iseegirls

Gra Ar An Tra does indeed make a return on the 10th March - stripped across 5 days. There must be some proper serious editing going on if they are removing any references to one of the contestants. Perhaps the individual came into it late, which may make it easier?

Virgin Media axes Gra ar an Tra contestant after failing to disclose assault conviction

deezell

And he didn't think this would be an issue? Sounds like Tate brother standards, as the pair of creeps slink back to the president of misogyny.

JamesyBelfast

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122531792#Comment_122531792

These links which allowed me to watch in Belfast have all recently stopped working. Would anyone know of new working links? Thanks.

icdg

no discussion of circumventing regional restrictions please

mikeym

Virgin more showing Arsenal and Psv.
Virgin Media 2 showing Lille and Dortmund.
what a joke to FTA viewers.

deezell

How? Arsenal 7-1 up from the first leg, a dead rubber. PSV will probably send the u20s. Only an Arsenal fan(atic) would be unhappy. Lille Dortmund is 1-1, so this is a real banger, but it's the early match, 17.45 and FTA. so they'll show the Villa match surely at 8.00 on VM2. Anyway Real v Athletico is the top contest. It's FTA on RTE2 at 8.00. Enjoy, a possible 240 mins of free footy plus shootouts. Exhausting, but someone has to watch it, it's my duty

iseegirls

The 2 matches that VM didn't have live went to penalties. They didn't wait around on both nights for the conclusion on the matches, and ended at 10.30. I'm not sure they even acknowledged the score and match too - considering it's on another channel.

deezell

They wouldn't have the rights to switch over to show the extra time, or shootouts, there's only so much you can say about your own live FTA matches and the VMMore one. Most viewers wold be watching the Atleti Real match anyway, even if they'd watched the Villa one, they'd have switched over. It's a good 45 minutes extra. Liverpool wasn't FTA, so no coverage until the news bulletin. I watched it on a stream, 120mins, no goal, and only a single penalty shootout goal. Donnarumma was awesome during the match, it was obvious he was going to win it for them. Athletico hard done by last night, first tome I've seen a shootout goal disallowed.

iseegirls

Strange low key WC European qualifying games for VMTV, with them just showing 4 games, 2 games each for England and Wales. Previous international weekends would have seen them show at least 10+ games live across VM2 and VMMore. Even more strangely is that the coverage starts at 7.35, and finishes at 9.45, giving a clear indication that there will be no studio based analysis, with the commentator doing the main bulk of work.

They do have a larger time dedicated to the Nations League Semi and Finals, probably also mainly due to with ROI playing those nights too.

Wonder was there a new deal done for the Euro Qualifiers though that seen VMT dramatically reduce their live games, or perhaps the other games aren't great and don't justify dedicating time to it.

icdg

There was always a general view that football fans were only interested in watching international football involving their own country, and classically outside of the major tournaments that was all that was shown. UEFA have tried to shake that off in the last decade or so when the rights were centralised and the “Week of Football” concept (or “European Qualifiers” brand to give it its proper title) was introduced.

But is there a bit of rolling back being done? Was the traditional view more correct? A new deal has just been done with the BBC which gives them coverage of Scotland, Wales, and NI fixtures without any obligation to show anything else which means that for now the only European Qualifiers being shown in the UK are those of the four UK nations (with ITV continuing a separate deal for England). Now that came about as a result of the fiasco where Viaplay retained control of the European Qualifiers/Nations League rights after it sold the rest of the UK operation to Premier but it’s set an interesting precedent.

Delta2113

The UEFA Nations League is coming to Prime Video in the UK through Pay Per View.

iseegirls

Just looking back at international football ratings for football on VMTV2, they do achieve quite a strong rating.

From the internationals in September: France v Belgium (105,000), Portugal v Scotland (102,000), France v Italy (47,900), Serbia v Spain (45,000), Bulgaria v N Ire (45,500), Greece v Finland (40,200)

In comparison, Father Ted got 58,000 at 9pm last week on RTE2. Love Island: All Stars got an average 47,000 on VM2 across Feb.

In saying that, the Nations League format does give a lot better competitive rounds of games. The UEFA WC qualifications doesn't throw up the same quality. There are a lot of good games in the Nations league Play-Offs, but they all start at the same time on Thursday and Sunday.

ArmaniJeanss

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123277213#Comment_123277213

Might be a new reduced deal as you say, or icdg's suggestion that fans aren't interested in two 'foreign' teams.

But could also be because it's a bit of a 'soft' start with dour fixtures and the likes of Germany, France, Spain, Italy & Netherlands not playing any qualifier games (and still not decided what group they will be in). Perhaps VM will show more games later on when the groups are clearer and it's potential Norway v Germany, Poland v Spain, Turkey v Netherlands type fixtures.

icdg

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123278720#Comment_123278720

Literally announced an hour ago, I had absolutely no idea that announcement was going to be made when I posted this morning.

And to be fair it’s an interesting experiment. UK viewers will have to pay £2.50 a pop for games we can see free to air here. Not sure why it was made PPV and not Included in Prime. We’ll see how successful it is.

I by the way am in the “football fans will watch any football” camp, particularly when it’s an international week with no club games. But there is a lot out there who are of the view that fans are only interested in their own country when it comes to internationals, and I think that needs to be acknowledged.

Dodge

Ireland would be fairly unique in having so much “non-local” international football available on free to air TV. While a lot of Europe will still have access to the Nations League game involving the big nations they’d be on pay sports channels (or streamers like DAZN etc)

RoTelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123281741#Comment_123281741

I think that is largely down to VMTV setting up their PAY TV sports channels a few years back, and potential the failure of eir sports in the market