RTE to outsource The Lotto

https://www.thejournal.ie/national-lottery-to-cease-production-in-rte-next-week-6977828-Mar2026/

Still no idea how much it was costing

Sounds like it will be a voice over from now on.

No, but from what we gather they were spending so much on the Lotto it could have been!

The look and feel of RTÉ TV is very gaudy.

It is all over the place. Clearly following the scandal the message was sent down from on above to make sure that every bumper, ident etc must tell the public that RTÉ is their public service broadcaster.

This would be fine if RTÉ content strategy had changed, but nothing has really changed. There programming strategy is completely the same. For all the talk of Drama and Comedy appointments, much of what they are producing the same as before, they are trying to swim before they can crawl and this is down largely to the letting go of so much over the last 2, or so, decades in favour of marketing departments and PR.

The late 90s and early 00s had given RTÉ a foundation and they had grown up and even the late 80s had given them the ability to grow, only to damage themselves from 2004 onward. I believe the ultimately damage was done by insisting that every radio station and TV channel must carry RTÉ in the front of their name and the mass introduction of the corporate logo.

I can understand completely the need to place everything under the one umbrella, but with that a new logo would have been required.

RTÉ ONE | 100 idents are just about passable, but it shows that RTÉ have forgotten some of their better ident work (the Millenium ident looks far more advanced than that of the 100 years one, that is a 26 year gap).

The money used to promo the news and current affair department could of been better spent either on content or better marketing. But RTÉ marketing is currently run by people with Marketing degrees and pencil pushers who outsource all of their work, and go on linkedin telling everyone how great they are, indeed last year at the Annual Celtic Media Festival the Head of Marketing and a former RTÉ staffer waxed lyrical about their ad for the Licence fee (another problem of RTÉ people boomeranging back after a potential redundancy payout). While the ad itself is in extreme bad taste following the scandal in RTÉ.

I saw this a few years ago when I FOI'd the process for the new RTÉ CO logo, a logo that didn't need to be updated, because the civil service class in RTÉ had been told this is what this money is for it must be spend on this particular thing. Indeed the NCH have since rebranded the NSO to NSOI and dropped RTÉ relatively imaginative one. A similar marketing / civil service view on marketing and promotion exists in the NCH IMO.

Anyway I had thought Lotto might be different considering it is commercial entity but what we got last night was worse than just simply announcing the numbers. TBH I never liked the set for either Winning Streak or The Lotto results.

Ah that's my rant for today. Just don't get me started on Virgin Media TV, TG4 is the best out of a bad lot IMO.

Did you see that scutter on RTE1 last night? It came on at 8:58PM and was all over in 80 seconds. Only the main draw was shown, then a screen grab with the numbers from the 3 draws, the raffle number, none of which are called out, and a tiny little blurb which reads, "Independently observed by KPMG".

Then in a new feature, they show a map of Ireland flashing around all the counties of the Republic, where they check on tonight's winners. And wasn't it very convenient that they got to say there was a winner of the Lotto Plus 2. In the last 4 months plus, there was just 1 winner of either the Lotto Plus 1 and 2 draws(72 draws between both of them).

Nuala Carey was "presenting", though she could have been phoning it in from home sitting in her underwear while eating a can of beans for all we know. Now there's a mental image. You don't see her at all.

The whole thing is so low budget and minimalist. I'm sure there are some visually impaired people that watch this, and now won't know what the numbers are from the Lotto Plus 1 and 2 draws are, from this new version. Or the raffle number.

And the National Lottery website is garbage as well. The winning numbers would go up around 8:20PM and then 15 or 20 minutes later, it would update again, listing any winners. Last night the numbers only went up at 9:10PM. This, despite the draw taking place an hour earlier. It used to shown live, now it's even more dodgy than it already is. The website said the draw could be watched here live. When I tried...

Computer says NO. 🖥️

One last thing, when they said there was a winner in the Lotto Plus 2 on TV, they could have said it was bought in Westmeath, as they knew this and said so on their website.

Good for you!

https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2026/0315/1563522-national-lottery-technical-issue/

The draw takes place on their You Tube channel at 7:55, the RTÉ version is cut down without either of the plus 1 draws.

Are they putting any of the draws on their youtube channel?

Nuala is probably inside tossing the balls as she's reading them out.

It's is hidden on their You Tube channel !