One flagged move in RTÉ’s mission to “evolve” and make €60 million worth of cutbacks over three years sounded innocuous, like a common-sense technicality. The broadcaster will shift its “biggest sporting moments” toOne, it said. But it’s a change with a potentially dramatic denouement for RTÉ2, the channel previously known as RTÉ Two, Network 2 and, um, N2.
Sport is the oxygen of the channel. In September this year, its 10 most-watched programmes were entirely composed of sport, courtesy of the All-Ireland, the Rugby World Cup and a Euro 2020 qualifier. But the top four of these weren’t just the most popular programmes on RTÉ2, they headed the chart across RTÉ that month, edging RTÉ One’s Room to Improve into fifth place.
It’s easy to see how the current RTÉ policy of reserving these “biggest sporting moments” for RTÉ2 can seem like an anomaly. After all, the BBC wouldn’t stick an England match on BBC Two unless it absolutely had to do so. Some sport events will be more moveable to RTÉ One than others. On weekends, there are fewer schedule obstacles than there would be from Monday to Friday. Last night’s Euro 2020 qualifier between the Republic of Ireland and Denmark, for instance, couldn’t have been shown on RTÉ One without disrupting the audiences for news or EastEnders.
But sport – the sport that RTÉ has managed to hold on to in an era of more competitive rights bidding – is more vital than ever to the organisation. And amid a lacklustre environment for television advertising, there is a logic to the broadcaster doubling down on RTÉ One, its biggest revenue generator.The flipside is that a dilution of RTÉ2 as the home of sport within RTÉ really does threaten to unravel it as a proper “destination” channel.
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