Is RTE Gold about to go FM?

Fantastic Station wonder if they are going to be broadcasting a bit longer than expected, does anyone know when all the staff where to be finished broadcasting on the station. ! Be a massive loss when it is wound down !

I heard BIGGY SMALLS played this afternoon.
The fact that this is now 'Gold' makes a lad few very old.

Of course, if the audience numbers/commercial advertisers insist on RTÉ Gold being more widely available on FM across daytime beyond the current Sat/Sun afternoons on RTÉ Radio 1, it will bring further pressure on RTÉ to re-consider all their options. I would imagine the private independent commercial radio sector would not welcome RTÉ Gold on FM unless RTÉ was required to close another existing RTÉ national radio service. The existing RTÉ "Digital Only" stations cannot sustain themselves as channels like RTÉ Gold, RTÉ Pulse, RTÉ 2XM, RTÉ junior/RTÉ chill and RTÉ Radio 1 Extra cannot run commercial advertising. It was unusual to hear ads today while tuning into the music on GOLD but then I remembered I was listening to it via RTÉ Radio 1 FM feed which would still need to carry adverts as a national FM station. These unusual times could result in RTÉ GOLD being given a reprieve in some form.

Will RTÉ Gold eventually replace RTÉ 2fm or RTÉ Lyric fm or else share bandwidth with one of these national FM stations at certain hours of the day/night to gain a further foothold on FM as I think it will gain more FM airtime after the GOLD on Radio 1 experiments?
Will Leahy is really plugging how to access the station today!

Dipole Keith wrote: »

What’s the big deal in RTE Gold all of a sudden, The only reason it was on RTE Radio 1 today is because there was no sport

I suppose it made little or no sense having a separate programme playing music & listener requests all through Sat/Sun afternoons for the weeks and possibly months ahead while live sports and many other events have had to cease during the Covid-19 global pandemic.

We already had a number of weekends of "Saturday Sounds" & "Sunday Sounds" with various presenters while Saturday Sport & Sunday Sport was taken off air. RTÉ Gold could have been used to fill the gap over last few weekends although; today was the first time they chose to simulcast RTÉ Gold on RTÉ Radio 1 during the afternoon and they were inundated with requests from home & abroad so much so that they stopped reading out their Text number.

RTÉ still has the same funding crisis which could now become a lot worse as the economy shrinks with so many businesses out of action or curtailed. The whole uncertainty surrounding the length of time that things will remain shut makes it all the more fascinating.

BBC and ITV will also have to fill a number of gaps as filming on soap/drama serials like EastEnders, Casualty, Holby City, Doctors, Coronation Street, Emmerdale is either curtailed or ceased. On RTÉ tv Fair City and Winning Streak have also been effected while The Late Late Show has Miriam O'Callaghan as a stand-in presenter last night and no studio audience.

RTÉ to launch "Operation Covid Nation" in April fronted by Kathryn Thomas and they want to hear from households across the country. The team from "Operation Transformation" have a plan to help people stay healthy, in mind and body, as people are having to live apart from family and friends and the normal routine of everyday life.

I heard some reports that RTÉ Gold along with it's other Digital Only stations were originally set to close down during the month of April but this may now change in the case of RTÉ Gold although this has not been officially confirmed by RTÉ.

I think they had more live presented shows on RTÉ Gold until late 2019 then it was scaled back to just Will Leahy on breakfast and Rick O'Shea in recent months.

Now all of that is about change again as RTÉ Gold is to expand from TWO to FOUR live shows as from Monday 30th March as follows:

07:00am - 10:00am Gold Breakfast with Will Leahy

10.00am - 1:00pm Rick O'Shea

1:00pm - 4:00pm Afternoon Gold with Keith Walsh

4:00pm - 7:00pm More Music Drive with Michael Cahill

RTÉ really needs to bite the bullet and sort out which of it's Radio/TV stations it considers essential or core to it's existence and concentrate on them instead of continuing to spread itself too thinly. RTÉ Gold deserves much better support if it is a station that has to keep Radio 1 going at inconvenient times. They had a competition prize worth just €50 to give away yesterday which was put up by both RTÉ Radio 1 and RTÉ Gold and I'm not sure if a sponsor was also involved! Less channels with quality output has to be the way to go especially if the expected recession does hit in the months ahead following the Coronavirus national and global pandemic. Government and the taxpayer will not be in the financial position to absorb an increase in the TV Licence Fee so; very worrying times ahead for RTÉ and many others.

I gather RTÉ Gold will continue to be simulcast on RTÉ Radio 1 from 2:00pm - 6:00pm every Saturday with Will Leahy and every Sunday afternoon with Rick O'Shea for the foreseeable future during the current emergency.

end of the road wrote: »

dab is the only actual transmission cost i would expect as saorview exists anyway and will continue to do so, and online would cost butttons, a pc in a rack room and whatever music licensing, they already have the hosting as they host all station streams on 2 servers anyway.
any paid presenters would likely be redeployed within the organisation, pulse's presenters are non-paid i believe.
radio 1 extra might be a cost if any unique programming is procured for it, i presume rtejr radio is just a relay of the audio from the television station.

I went and checked the audio feed on "RTÉ junior radio" this morning versus the output on the RTÉjr tv channel at the same time and they had completely different programmes. I don't think RTÉjr tv channel and the RTÉ junior radio channel have any commercial advertising as a source of revenue.

I'm sure RTÉ 2 TV would often show material shown on RTÉjr TV channel alright although; it may not always be broadcast at the exact same time.

I wonder if RTÉ will be making any formal announcements in relation to the extension of RTÉ Gold in the coming days or over Easter?

It will also be interesting to see if if all of the other RTÉ Digital-Only Radio stations will close over Easter or continue indefinitely during the Covid-19 emergency?

I wonder how effective is RTÉ 2XM ?
Was the station originally intended as an extension of 2FM in some way?

And what about "RTÉ chill" from 9:00pm until around 07:00am
(RTÉ chill shares the same LCN slot number with RTÉ junior radio when the younger listeners have gone to bed)

"RTÉ Radio 1 Extra" seems to be a mix of RTÉ Radio 1 output (from both FM and LW 252) along with other international public service broadcasters like BBC World Service etc;

If they manage to get "RTÉ Gold" on FM on a full-time basis with the ability of running advertising it would perform a lot better in the audience ratings.