BBC? Ya Wha?

Telefís

I was in Kerry during the week visiting relatives and as much as I knew it was the case already, I was nonetheless shocked to find they only had RTÉ 1, RTÉ 2, TV3 & TG4! As they always have had.

Just seemed extraoridinary that they've never seen the BBC or ITV, let alone the host of other stations.
Sorry that this posting is rather obvious, just the 'reality' of it was brought home to me seeing them all watching TV3 News and then swiching over to RTÉ News. Also of interest was that they hung onto every word of the RTÉ Irish news with rolling text - something 99.9% of us in cities or the East would immediately flick off!

Also struck me how their view of the world and Ireland is shaped by seeing it soley through the output RTÉ - it seems to reinforce the parochial nature of the people of the area if that's not a too patronising thing to say.
As much as I watch and enjoy the output of RTÉ, it is at the end of the day quite hokey and parochial - and the idea of people only 'knowing' this content to 'be television' in 2005 seemed extraorinary to me.

Now they are quite old people, and some of the 40 yr old+ children have Sky, but still many people down there, and much younger in age have only ever experienced RTÉ :eek:

Suppose what you've never had you don't miss.

Anyone else have similar 'horror' stories?

county

rednecks

Mossy Monk

my granny has only the Irish stations. dont see anything 'wow' about it at all

the_syco

Telef&#237 wrote: »

I was in Kerry during the week visiting relatives and as much as I knew it was the case already, I was nonetheless shocked to find they only had RTÉ 1, RTÉ 2, TV3 & TG4! As they always have had.

Flick the sky dish the correct direction, and it'll pick up alot. Relatives have an astra dish, and it picks up German and French channels. Some with decent porn!

Ulsterman 1690

During the cold war Dresden (the only city in East Germany where TV signals from outside the GDR couldnt be recieved) was nicknamed "the valley of the clueless"

Prior to the Beeb going FTV on Astra Kerry must have been Ireland's Dresden

ADDS: Why would anyone with only RTE even bother having a TV ? They must watch a lot of DVD's ?

Zaphod

Telef&#237 wrote: »

Also struck me how their view of the world and Ireland is shaped by seeing it soley through the output RTÉ - it seems to reinforce the parochial nature of the people of the area if that's not a too patronising thing to say.

God forbid that they should have to resort to reading a newspaper, magazine or listening to a radio as a news source.

There's more and better quality hard news available on LW/SW than 95% of the execrable crud transmitted by Sky.

Telef&#237 wrote: »

Now they are quite old people, and some of the 40 yr old+ children have Sky, but still many people down there, and much younger in age have only ever experienced RTÉ :eek:

It must be a terrible burden for them not knowing who has been evicted from Big Brother this week. :rolleyes:

Ulsterman 1690 wrote:

Prior to the Beeb going FTV on Astra Kerry must have been Ireland's Dresden

The UK channels were being transmitted as far west as Tralee 30 years ago by the deflector operators until Rambo Burke had them shut down. They were still receivable on VHF aerials in parts of East Kerry until recently.

After that people forced to resort to paying for the substandard service provided by Chorus MMDS if they wanted BBC etc., despite the system being totally unsuited to the topography.

Ulsterman 1690

I knew Clare and Cork had deflectors but I didnt realise they extended as far southwest as Kerry

How did people recieve BBC on VHF aerials (they must have been HUGE ???)when the Beeb stopped using VHF in 1985 ?

Richard

Ulsterman 1690 wrote:

How did people recieve BBC on VHF aerials (they must have been HUGE ???)when the Beeb stopped using VHF in 1985 ?

I guess the deflectors must have been transmitting 625 Colour on VHF in the same was that RTE 1/2 do in some areas to this day.

Not that I've watched any of the ROI stations in a good while, but I'm sure I could cope if I lived somewhere that had just that. I mean - it's only TV!

Though maybe after a while I'd get a satellite for FTA BBC.

Zaphod

Ulsterman 1690 wrote:

I knew Clare and Cork had deflectors but I didnt realise they extended as far southwest as Kerry

Backs in the 80s practically every rooftop in Tralee had a high gain UHF aerial for the reception of UK channels.

Ulsterman 1690 wrote:

How did people recieve BBC on VHF aerials (they must have been HUGE ???)when the Beeb stopped using VHF in 1985 ?

In those particular areas of east Kerry, they were located relatively high above sea level, so I reckon they had more or less unobstructed views to the deflectors and therefore strong signals.

Telefís

Interesting stuff.

To be honest I could live quite happily with just RTÉ, and agreed that it is 'just television' - not the end of the world.

What struck me though is that their idea of what television 'is' is shaped soley by RTÉ - i.e. to give a basic example, they all got rather excited when Mary Harney appeared on the News

Just that so much of the quality output from the BBC and other stations, from documentary to drama would be alien to them.

It was more the idea that their idea of television is RTÉ that interested me, rather than their missing out in all the stuff most of us are used to - agreed most of which we could do without anyway.

Must have been great, for all its general crappiness, to get TV3 upon its establishment.

Lennoxschips

Most of my family in Cork only have the basic Irish channels. My parents (or me) have never subscribed to pay television, when we moved to Holland the city council run cable network gave us loads of channels for free.

Also, the quality of the BBC news nowadays has been dumbed down so much that people watching RTE news probably have a better grasp of world affairs.

I know however that my grandparents (from Kerry and Cork) and parents (from Cork), in the time before people had televisions, often listened to BBC longwave and France Inter on the "transistor", so they hardly grew up clueless.

Ulsterman 1690

I know however that my grandparents (from Kerry and Cork) and parents (from Cork), in the time before people had televisions, often listened to BBC longwave and France Inter on the "transistor", so they hardly grew up clueless.

In parts of South Kerry for a long time the French stations on Longwave came in clearer than RTE because of the sea path to the continent coupled with the mountains blocking out most of the signals from Athlone, Tullamore and Mullaghanish

It was only with the installation of FM relays in the area that this situation was rectified although this didnt happen in some places until well into the 1990's or so Im told

magnumlady

I know quite a lot of people around the Sligo area with just the Irish channels. I had to laugh when I was in an electrical shop in town and someone came in wanting to get Sky television.
The shop assistant said ' Sure what do you want Sky for, can't ye only watch one channel at a time'!

rogue-entity

Strange, That was exactly what my uncle used to say when I tried to get him to get sky instead of nthell. He also used to say, "you cant have the internet because I dont need it"

Oh wouldnt it be nice to be able to get ALL the UK channels on sky so that we dont have to resort to snowy analogue signals.

Solair

If they wanted BBC/ITV etc they could easily get it on MMDS anyway and would have been able to for quite a long time.

There were also the deflectors and Sky has been carrying BBC for quite a while now.

And even before it did, you could still get sky digital or sky analogue to suplement your RTE1/2 TV3 TG4 output.

I know people in County Dublin who only have RTE 1/2 TV3 and don't even tune in TG4 ..

They don't get BBC and wouldn't pay for NTL.

It's not THAT shocking!