Posted on November 1, 2006 - by John

No more Sky News Ireland

It seems that Sky News Ireland is going in the same direction as Ireland on Sunday, according to recent reports the twice daily broadcasts from Dublin will end from the end of November. And I must say I am not altogether surprised. Whilst in theory having another option when it comes to an Irish news service is great, choice is always nice, Sky News Ireland never really stood a chance against TV3 News and RTE news.

When Irish people want Irish News they turn to Irish based news services, and although Sky News Ireland had its news offices in Dublin, it was always branded as being not Irish based. I wonder if their star news reader, poached from TV3, Gráinne Seoige, got wind of this, was her departure from Sky News not very sudden.

From what I understand from Sky is they are not admitting that they are exiting the Irish news market, but they will still carry Irish news stories on their broadcasts, it does however seem to be a budget thing, the budget Sky news Ireland had seems to have been a split of their UK budget, so when it came to making some cuts, Ireland was number one on the list!

I felt also it was almost as if they were forcing you to watch their news, at one stage they had Sky News Ireland on Sky One and Sky News, I’m not sure if this was an attempt to gain a larger audience, but it was a bit of a waste of time.

Update
“Last night a source confirmed the staff had been given the choice of whether they would continue to air through the month of November or cease immediately and they had decided on the second option. News anchors, correspondents, producers and technicians will be affected.” Source: Irish Examiner

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