I have to agree with EirePreneur and Brian Greene. I used to just think that it was “Oirish” that I could receive BBC Free to Air but not RTÉ and that RTÉ would get their act together eventually, but it doesn’t seem to be happening. Rather than just wringing our hands about it, what, if anything, can we do about it? Who could we lobby?
2 thoughts on “RTÉ Free to Air?”
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Hi John,
I think it would be useful if RTÉ was available on FTA satellite. With RTÉ,BBC,C4 and UTV available lots of people would save money by not getting cable/mmds/sky.
However, I would imagine that, if RTÉ was FTA on satellite, it would be available in GB, therefore they would then be competing with BBC/ITV for *UK* broadcast rights for programs. I presume there are deals in place where BBC/ITV “allow” RTÉ to show programs before they’re shown on UK tv which is available in Ireland since they know RTÉ is not available in the UK.
What would be more likely to work would be RTÉ encrypted but free (without subscription) to Irish addresses, presumably Sky would prefer not to lose subscriptions by doing this though.
I do think digital RTÉ should be available in Ireland (BTW that’s not an exclusion) without a Sky/cable subscription, however I don’t know the best way of acheiving that.
I’m fairly sure that it could be restricted to Irish Viewing audiences by use of an “RTE” card, but I’m not 100% sure to be honest.