The Virgin Media Television thread

So a full year with out Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and VMTV one continues to air repeats of 74 epsiodes.

Did VMTV take Deal or No Deal?

And amazingly, even with the constant run of repeats, WWTBAM continues to appear in the Top20 ratings for VM1. The latest ratings shows it's the 4th most popular show after I'm A Celeb, Corrie and Emmerdale.

I just can't understand it myself, how viewers are watching it - despite it being repeated so often. You'd presume not all of those 102,000 people are seeing an episode from 2019 for the first time.

Few stats about that episode shown on VMTV for those interested: Series 32 Episode 3:

• VM1 03/JAN/2019 21:00
• VM2 21/FEB/2019 21:00
• VM1 29/MAR/2020 21:00
• VM1 04/APR/2020 22:30
• VM2 06/DEC/2020 22:15
• VM2 12/DEC/2020 22:00
• -----------------------------
• VM1 11/MAR/2023 20:30
• VM1 14/MAR/2023 23:00
• VM1 18/NOV/2023 21:35
• VM1 21/NOV/2023 23:15

They have a recent tendency to show a series 8 times within a 2 year block. So you may see this episode shown 4 more times before the end of 2024.

Series 31 Episode 1 was shown 16 times. 8 times shown between 5th May 2018 - 19th April 2020, and then 8 times between 14th April 2023 - 8th August 2023.

Throughout her career, Gráinne Seoige has presented news and current affairs programmes and, when she was at RTÉ, an afternoon chat show and CrimeCall. One would've assumed that VMTV's dating show would have been beneath her, even if it is at least partly as Gaeilge!

Largely speaking ITV have a clear idea of the audience and the channel, I am not saying that they don't stray.

Virgin Media TV channels have very little differences to them. VMTV one being their main TV station for News, Sport, Weather and Local Programming, the rest seem to be all over the place, VMTV FOURs look is very poor.

You kind of have to admire their lack of caring about how the channels are viewed. They'll do the bare minimum as long as it makes money, and I assume it must be...

I've yet to find any newspapers or magazines anywhere that carry Virgin Media Four's listings.

Even Virgin Media Player doesn't even mention the channel - no live view, no chance to watch previous shows.

The VM4 schedule is so erratic. There is no pattern from week to week, and further gives the illusion that the schedule is seemingly generated by a bot on a weekly basis. Full reruns of the Rugby World games again over the next few days. They're showing the full 90minutes of Man Utd's Champions League group stage match v Bayer Leverkusen from 2013 on Monday (been shown multiple times on VMSport and More since and includes the TV3 graphics). They're also showing Ireland's Weather 2018: Climate Chaos three times next week.

Only things I've watched on VM4 are The Hotel Inspector and a random Carry On movie that popped up twice one week (before the watershed).

Yes, annoying, had to return from HD to SmudgeD. Great result for Brighton. There were no problems with VM1 player, it was probably an issue with settings on the streaming server, audio is usually out of sync.

This years “Inside M&S at Christmas” will be on Virgin Media One on Thursday at 9pm.

They've completely given up on Christmas. 2 weeks of nothingness. It's understandable that Ireland AM, 6 O'clock show, The Tonight Show get their rest as they're on most of the year. But the news goes into hibernate mode from this Friday 22nd December to Tuesday 2nd January. That's quite a gap.

Lack of Christmas films, or any type of family films across all 5 channels too. They showed more Christmas films (albeit low quality made-for-tv movies) in November than they did for all of December.

Theyre not showing the This Morning and Loose Women episodes from the Wed-Fri slot either next week. I guess the schedule just goes into autopilot mode from this Saturday, and they couldn't be arsed having someone in to sync up ads etc for a live show like This Morning. Best just have a 2 year old Americans Got Talent on instead. Even odd things like Emmerdale and Corrie not in sync next week with timeslots, with sometimes airing 30mins later than ITV.

You do wonder if any of the staff in there find it as embarrassing? Surely none of them would fully say that this is a great schedule, and would share that with family and friends. Let's get on the 23rd showing of Gino's Italian Escape for the Xmas Dinner. Yay.

You could email them and ask the scheduler if he's embarrassed, I think his name is Charles, or Cha something. Cha T Geept? Where's this I've heard of him before ? He can do everything apparently, not so sure of embarrassment though.

Always interesting to look at Glassdoor, to see how staff/ex-staff view the place. One from Oct 2022:

Employees are overworked and underpaid, with many depts hugely understaffed due to management being unwilling to invest in staffing. They keep adding extra channels and workflows, with no consideration to the staff whose workloads will double or treble as a result. 

Nice mention to VM More and VM4 that were added during that year. A lot there about low-paying etc.. No wonder RTE were able to come in and poach them easily.

And again at 01:45 tonight.

Ireland's Crazy Christmas Lights is on three times today. It made a few appearances yesterday as well.