The Virgin Media Television thread

Pat Kenny lined up for a special interview with Leo Varadkar at 9 tonight. Surprising that VM don't use Pat Kenny much at all.

mike2084 wrote: »

Not sure if anyone spotted this today but today's racing On Virgin Media 2 was a straight re-broadcast of Racing TV, not the usual ITV which was on on ITV4 as normal.

Same now , it's a direct simulcast of Racing TV , even though same racing is on ITV/UTV . I thought TV3 had a 10 year deal with ITV for first pick of everything?

Elmo wrote: »

For Racing ?

Can't be certain it includes Horse Racing, but for the last year or more, all TV3 racing coverage came via ITV, this is first time they are simulcasting Racing TV.

zeebre12 wrote: »

Do they not have full series rights to Heartbeat? You never see the earlier series. At least they would be something different

They've shown from Series 11 upwards on VM2 and VM3 over the past 2 years. Even when TV3 started broadcasting Heartbeat as part of their Granada TV deal in 2000 - they started showing Series 10+. They did show Series 1-4 as part of a Classic Heartbeat runs that ran some weekday mornings at around 11:30am from 2002-2004.

Elmo wrote: »

Anyone know if Ireland AM is going back to 7am soon?

I've been following digiguide/tvguide.co.uk over the past few days - and the schedule for Virgin Media One keeps changing on a near daily basis.

They had Ireland AM starting at 8am this week for a while, and in the TV guides. Then Friday they had it starting at 7am for this week. Then Sunday, it was back to 8am.

Same for News @ 5.30. Changes going on randomly the past few days - currently according to online - it's an hour tonight, and then back to half an hour from Tue-Fri.

hotmail.com wrote: »

Are the ratings for Ireland AM from 7 to 8am terrible?

I assume they lost viewers at 7am due to people not having to get up as early for their commute. I've only ever seen one figure for Ireland AM and that is a 25% share of the audience with 50,000 viewers on average across 3 hours. and that's from way back.

iseegirls wrote: »

Probably also tough to fill 3 hours when no guests can come into the studio. There's a lot of filler on those shows like fashion, cookery, gadgets, fitness etc.. that don't work as well over skype/zoom.

I think Simon Delaney has been doing most of the cooking every weekend for the last few months.

You could take a look back at some cookery from over the years on the show.

Fashion and Gadgets not so much.

Do they do fitness?

Elmo wrote: »

I can't see ITV being able to repeat a full series of Love Island considering the circumstances surrounding the death of its host.

ITV 2 are showing the 1st series of the Australian version from next Monday.

VMT appear to have jumped them however, they're airing it from Thursday @ 10 on VM3.
the other LI still on @ 9 on vm2

Elmo wrote: »

Strange from VMT as LI isn't breaking their top 20 shows for VM2.

maybe just a reaction to itv showing it and like someone said earlier easy/lazy scheduling. pretty sure they showed it before so would've numbers for it.

i read itv also aired it before on BE but it didn't do well

When are these people at Virgin Media going to get the finger out and sort out their HD transmissions. They are available on 4 platforms but only offer the HD version on two of these, their own platform & Sky. Why can't they sort their issues out with Saorview & Eir (the old Vision variant). No +1 on Saorview & +1 on Eir Vision is patchy to say the least - colour vertical bars more often than not. The well paid suits should have revolved these issues ages ago.
It's pathetic to have to go to UK channels for decent picture quality no matter what the programme content may be.

Machinehead wrote: »

When are these people at Virgin Media going to get the finger out and sort out their HD transmissions. They are available on 4 platforms but only offer the HD version on two of these, their own platform & Sky. Why can't they sort their issues out with Saorview & Eir (the old Vision variant). No +1 on Saorview & +1 on Eir Vision is patchy to say the least - colour vertical bars more often than not. The well paid suits should have revolved these issues ages ago.
It's pathetic to have to go to UK channels for decent picture quality no matter what the programme content may be.

VM Three is SD only on Sky. So their own platform is the only place to get all their channels in HD

Elmo wrote: »

I assume that 3e HD took UTV Ireland HD place on the Sky platform?

Yeah, when UTV Ireland SD/HD rebranded to be3, the TV3 Group made 3e available in HD on Sky with be3 being SD only

Brock Turnpike wrote: »

Historic politics has no place on the schedule when there are episodes of "All Star Mr & Mrs" and "All Star Family Fortunes" to be repeated for the 5th time.

now that you put it like that, I agree it’s was historic.

twinklerunner wrote: »

It was on three of RTÉ’s channels - One, Oireachtas and News Now. I’m sure that Virgin made the right call. Most viewers will watch RTÉ One’s coverage anyway.

Why do they bother doing the covid 19 updates if that's the reasoning?

twinklerunner wrote: »

Indeed. I regard the Virgin channels as pretty much irrelevant.

Virgin Media One would be irrelevant to themselves if they hadn't continued with COVID-19 updates what they lost from the soaps they gained from their news coverage. And really only for the UTV Ireland News crew have they actually come near to a proper news service.

Digifriendly wrote: »

Because there's a world of a difference between Covid 19 and the formation of a historic coaltion government. Covid 19 crisis is happening every day and is affecting all of the lives of Irish citizens in a way that yesterday's events at the Conference centre are not. If VM had covered the latter there would have been a welter of complaints as to why 4 channels on Saorview were covering the same event.

I know it's important and I am glad they are showing it. I wasn't questioning why they were showing it but the reasoning of the post I quoted. I thought that was obvious.

Gogglebox coming back to Virgin Media.

I hate that show.

Maz2016 wrote: »

I like it and think the Irish version is done well

I think its a show you either love or hate. Don't think much of either version TBH.

Elmo wrote: »

Will be interesting to see if Yeats is back in September, it all sounds like it is just newstalk.

He's done with his television show too. He said so on the radio earlier. His last show on Virgin Media television is July 23rd

Watching Ivan tonight he seems as engaged and on top of things as ever. I wonder will he regret this latest retirement after a couple of months...

The schedule is getting so bad on VM2 and VM3 - its basically a copy of ITV3 these days.

Wonder why they didn't go for specific channel names - look at how Sky have created channels like Sky Comedy, Sky Documentaries etc..

Instead Virgin Media have 3 channels which show the exact same thing, on repeat and all from ITV catalogue.