rte.ie
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| rte.ie | |
|---|---|
| URL | www.rte.ie |
| Commercial? | Yes |
| Type of site | Portal |
| Registration | No |
| Owner | RTÉ Publishing |
| Created by | RTÉ |
rte.ie is the website of RTÉ, Ireland's state-owned public service broadcaster. The site was started on 26 May 1996. It operates on an entirely commercial basis, receiving none of the licence fee which funds most of RTÉ's activities, and is funded by advertising and section sponsorship. As of 2007, it is among the top 5000 most visited websites by Alexa rankings, with RTÉ claiming in excess of 30 million page impressions a month. The most recent revamp of the website took place on 30 January 2007.
Contents |
[edit] Audio and video content
Large amounts of RTÉ content is available without geographic restrictions in RealAudio or RealVideo formats, including virtually all news and events broadcasts on radio and television dating back to 1998, and most episodes of Prime Time and Nationwide dating back a number of years. This contrasts to the 7-day and often geographically limited availability of BBC content via bbc.co.uk. Occasional other RTÉ-originated content such as Show Me the Money is also provided. Video streams vary between 56 and 225 kbit/s or higher and vary from RealMedia versions eight through ten. Many are direct dumps from RTÉ 1 and 2, and hence include their digital on-screen graphics, or even ad breaks. The site was one of the first to offer audio downloads, with FTP-hosted RealAudio 2 files being provided as far back as 1996, with streaming being introduced in 1997, initially using Xing Streamworks, and later moving back solely to Real.
The majority of recent RTÉ television and radio shows have their own mini-sites, which vary from providing clips to full versions of the shows, as well as mp3 podcasts of some of their radio shows. Most RTÉ Radio 1 shows are available for non-live streaming. Streams of topical radio shows, such as Today with Pat Kenny and Liveline, often only cover the previous seven day period, or a period of about a month for other shows such as The Mystery Train. In a recent development an archive of The Tubridy Show going back to September 2006 has been made available .Very few full shows from RTÉ 2fm are available for non-live streaming, and most shows on RTÉ Lyric FM and Raidió na Gaeltachta only have the previous episode available. For their textual news, sport, business and entertainment sections; RSS feeds are provided.
Regular live webcasting of RTÉ programmes began on 17 March 2007. All RTÉ News and Current Affairs programmes, such as Prime Time, Questions and Answers as well as programmes like the Saint Patrick's Day Parade, are streamed live, usually with unrestricted access.
[edit] RTÉ Aertel
A live mirror of RTÉ's teletext system, RTÉ Aertel, is provided. Aertel was provided by the site from 1996, originally to provide the text news service, and is digitised by screen scraping the off-air broadcasts. The content from both RTÉ One (Aertel) and RTÉ Two (Aertel Plus) is available.
[edit] RTÉ News, Sport, Entertainment and Business
The news site was launched in 1998, with its own dedicated journalists. RTÉ News Online (later RTÉ Interactive News and now simply called RTÉ News) was the first major site in Ireland to provide a rolling online news service with content written for the web. This was followed by a sports news site in August 1999, the Arts, Culture & Entertainment (ACE) site in 2000 (later RTÉ Interactive Entertainment and now RTÉ Guide Entertainment) and OnBusiness, the business news website, in 2001 (now called simply RTÉ Business).
[edit] RTÉ Archives
Access to themed selections from the RTÉ Libraries and Archives is also available through rte.ie, with new topics being added occasionally. Previous years' selections remain available, and cover radio back to the 1920's and television back to 1961.
[edit] Awards
rte.ie has won several awards, including a number of Golden Spider Awards.
