Virgin Media’s new channel proves we’re still haunted by the spirit of UTV Ireland

Trouble was, “real UTV,” as he called it, vanished from television screens in this country overnight. In its place was UTV Ireland, an attempt by UTV Media to capture a slice of the television market in the Republic.

Armed with the Irish broadcasting rights to the viewer magnet Coronation Street and Emmerdale, UTV Ireland, previously held by TV3, wanted to wipe the floor with the country’s first commercial channel.

With a 30-minute program at 6.30pm, later moved to 5.30pm, and an hour-long program at 10pm, it was also hoped to dent RTÉ’s dominance of television news. None of these things happened.

UTV Ireland was enthusiastically welcomed by then Communications Minister Pat Rabbitte. It was also enthusiastically welcomed by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI), who signed the deal giving the channel the green light.

The only people who didn’t enthusiastically greet UTV Ireland were the only ones who mattered in the end: the viewers. Angry at being forced upon them, they stayed away in droves.

You had every right to be angry. They had been robbed of a Thoroughbred and given a flea-bitten bum as compensation.

The minds behind UTV Ireland, for lack of a better word, stumbled into a market they didn’t understand. They condescendingly assumed that Irish households – some of whom have been able to watch UTV, HTV and BBC since the 1950s, long before RTÉ even had television service – would be happy to accept a half-baked shambles of a channel as a replacement.

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As UTV Ireland was not part of the ITV network, it did not have the rights to show the latest ITV dramas and was forced to search the network’s back catalogue.

I well remember an elderly neighbor telling me how after sitting down to watch the new series of her favorite drama, foyle’s war, Last Sunday she was dismayed to discover UTV Ireland was airing an old episode she had seen five years earlier.

Crucially, the new channel did not hold the Irish broadcasting rights to what was then the biggest drama series on television. Downton Abbey. These were still owned by TV3, but the channel was contractually prevented from showing them in the UK until a few days after they had aired.

Viewer reaction to UTV Ireland’s meager catalog of original programming was indifferent. It was just success Daniel and Majella’s B&B road trip, which was later snaffled by RTÉ.

What would become his Irish flagship show Pat Kenny in the round, was a dry affair, banged up in the ratings by this old RTÉ warhorse crime reputation. His news programs were an absolute disaster. One edition only drew 4,700 spectators.

When UTV Ireland, after suffering catastrophic financial losses, was bought out by TV3’s new owners, Virgin Media, and immediately closed down – two years and a week after it went on the air in a flare of hype – most of the many lost jobs in the news department.

UTV Ireland was the biggest folly in Irish broadcasting history – and quite possibly one of the biggest in all of broadcasting.

But after all these years, his ghost still haunts television.

We never got “real UTV” back, although Sky customers can manually add it to their channels – the downside is you can’t pause or record programmes.

Virgin Media, despite its access to ITV’s programming, is still unpredictable when it comes to distributing it to Irish viewers.

Starting Tuesday, April 12th, they’ll be even harder to enjoy. Big new ITV dramas such as The IpPress file and Keep will be grouped together on Virgin Media More’s new ‘first look’ channel, available only to Virgin subscribers.

All of this can be traced back to UTV Ireland.