Bye Bye Tara?????

PacMan

In a brief report tonight on RTE's Six-One news, it was announced that an examiner was appointed to Tara Television.
Could this be the end of Tara ?

Gadgie

From http://www.rte.ie/news/2002/0301/newsinbrief.html:

---

Examiner appointed to Tara Television
The High Court has appointed an interim examiner to Tara Television Ltd, whose principal business is transmitting RTÉ programmes in Britain. Mr Justice Brian McCracken appointed the examiner after he was told that the company's liabilities exceeded its assets by over €22m. The court was told that the company was unable to pay its debts but was capable of survival if an examiner was appointed.

---

Glenn

ifconfig

bye bye Tara --- hello daddy (RTE1/NW2/TG4)

couldn't resist this pre-Apri 1 pun .....

--eirin

DMC

I knew its viewing figures were not the best, but I didn't see that coming.

A sad day.

icdg

Don't write them off just yet.

Examinership is indeed a bleak step to take, but it isn't liquidation. The examiner has the duty to check the stations books and see if there is any way to salvage the station. The station is continuing to transmit - for the moment. Only if there is no way to salvage it will the court appoint a Reciever or Liquidator to dissolve the business.

If it does go under, it will be a sad day. Remember that mainstream RTE cannot be broadcast in Britain owing to insurmountable rights issues. I only watched Tara on one occasion, but found it great to be able to see the RTE News in London.

Report on ICDG BTW within the half-hour. Until (and if) liquidation is announced, you won't see an obiturary there though.

wizard1

Maybe they (TARA) should have thought about the viewing figures, before they cut off the signal to Irish based viewers, and encrypted their signal at 34w!!. Proper order if they go under!!!. I never agreed with programmes made with Irish licence payers money, being restricted to uk viewers!.

Cheers!

PacMan

I never agreed with programmes made with Irish licence payers money, being restricted to uk viewers!.

I was not happy when Irish viewers of Sky were blocked from viewing Tara. as I watched the news and current affairs programmes.

However BBC does this with two of their stations. BBC World and BBC Prime which are available only (Legally) outside the UK.

I wonder would they make more money if it was an add on sub channel ala film four in the UK?
perhaps it should receive some UK govt funding as a service to a cultural minority in the UK ie the Irish.
Of course similar funding would then have to go to the aisan channels etc.

Speaking of Aisan channels-do they not have a similar potential audience?
Some of them are Subscription based-albeit available in other countrie/platforms also.

Obviously Irish people in Britain do not have enough interest in TV from the auld sod .
But that might change if they showed lots of GAA etc.
Maybe the Examiner should merge Tara with Setanta (or whatever its called) No sense in spreading things too thinly when you are dealing with essentially the same audience.
mm

rlogue

I can never understand why Setanta restrict themselves to pubs and clubs when there is the potential of a large audience for live GAA in Britain.

In my opinion, a combined Tara TV and Setanta Sports would make a lot more commercial sense than the present arrangements and one that might just survive. Tara/Setanta could be Free to View during normal programmes and then encrypt during GAA for either Pay per View or a subscription based service.

rlogue

Originally posted by wizard1
Maybe they (TARA) should have thought about the viewing figures, before they cut off the signal to Irish based viewers, and encrypted their signal at 34w!!. Proper order if they go under!!!. I never agreed with programmes made with Irish licence payers money, being restricted to uk viewers!.

Cheers!

Cheers yourself, 'wizard1'.

More power to your clearly powerful right arm.

David C

It'd be nice if Tara took Irish ads and moved on to 105 as an extra repeat digital channel for RTÉ, something like BBC Choice.

Last night they were showing Podge & Rodge, which wasn't on RTÉ at the time I would've liked to see if that bloody "not available" banner wasn't there.

icdg

Originally posted by rlogue

In my opinion, a combined Tara TV and Setanta Sports would make a lot more commercial sense than the present arrangements and one that might just survive. Tara/Setanta could be Free to View during normal programmes and then encrypt during GAA for either Pay per View or a subscription based service.

Sounds a lot like Canal+'s arrangements - subscription during movies and sports, free-to-view during normal programmes.

Reading todays newspapers and the new information contained in them, I'm getting very pessimistic about Tara's chances of survival. And RTE are the ones pushing it all the way. Why are RTE so intent on killing Tara? That seems to be a question that must be asked? Is some sort of a deal with Sky up their sleeves? Or is it just what it seems to be, plain cost cutting.

PacMan

Reading reports today in both the Business Post, and Tribune, I was suprised to see that it was RTE who was the interested party in appointing an examiner to Tara.
I would assume that since RTE channels will be soon available on Sky, that perhaps another reason as to why RTE would do this.
As Newspaper reports today suggested, it costs RTE very little in their commitment to Tara, as all programmes shown on it have already been aired on RTE and are just re-broadcast in the Tara schedules.

Charles Slane

Hmmm...

One of RTE's biggest reasons for going on Sky Digital is to increase their availability in Northern Ireland.

The reason that Tara TV was taken from Irish Sky subscribers was that RTE didn't want Tara taking away it's advertising revenue.

See the connection ?

It suits RTE to withdraw it's programming from Tara (which it apparently intends to do in May) and get the station shut down or at least not have any of RTE's big programmes. That way viewers in NI will be not be watching Tara, but RTE 1 and Network 2 instead. More advertising cash for RTE.

It is also not inconceivable that RTE will do a deal to have their channels available to UK viewers (as the Beeb did for Ireland), either in full, or possibly as some mix of RTE1, Network 2 and TG4. That way all the advertising money goes straight to RTE.

There's definitely more to RTE's decision to put pressure on Tara than meets the eye.

icdg

Originally posted by PacMan
Reading reports today in both the Business Post, and Tribune, I was suprised to see that it was RTE who was the interested party in appointing an examiner to Tara.

Actually, RTE wanted to appoint a full liquidator to Tara. They simply want out competely. UPC took the examinership route as a last ditch attempt to save the company. But if RTE wants to withold its programming, nothing Tara or UPC can do.

I agree wit charles slane.
RTE are obviously learning from their mistakes-A definite first for them!
There is clearly something up their sleeve and if that happens to be a "semi" encrypted launch in Britain-all well and good.
Certainly,theres no sense in them allowing Tara's existence when they are going into NI.
With UTV's eventual arrival on the ROI EPG(and it will...after a while) Of course RTE will want rid of Tara to maximise add revenue in the North-especially when UTV+Ch4 are biting them.

In the mean time when Tara goes,all Irish ex pats living in Britain have to do is to swap their digiboxes and card with their Relatives/friends back home(if the latter have a good enough analogue RTE/TV3) and Bingo-lots of sports and early showings of US stuff.
mm

Charles Slane

Very interesting article in the Irish Independent here -

http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=184&si=706157&issue_id=7001

"TARA TV, the loss-making cable and satellite company that went into examinership last week, is claiming audited viewership of an average 1.3m viewers a day.....

....Tara has also confirmed that it owes a total of Euro18m to its majority shareholder UPC, which has said it is willing to back the company, and a Euro2.7m shareholder loan to RTE....

In addition, RTE is owed Euro1.7m in unpaid programming charges which Tara is asking to be converted into a loan.

According to the company, if it is forced into liquidation by RTE, the state-broadcaster will receive about Euro180,000 in payment, whereas if the company is kept going, RTE will immediately get Euro375,000 as part of the Tara proposal.

"RTE's decision does not seem to make any financial sense to Tara," the spokesperson said...."

1.3 million viewers a day ??? Seems like viewing figures are very like statistics - you can make them say anything you want really.

Apart from that, the article does seem to back up our earlier theories about RTE wanting rid of Tara in order to increase it's own advertising revenues when it launches on Sky Digital in NI (and possibly some version of it in GB)