Tara Television

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Screenshot of Tara TV from 31 January 2000, including the station's logo; when not broadcasting, the station would show its listings on loop.

Tara Television (or Tara TV) was an Irish cable and satellite channel aimed primarily at the Irish community living in Britain, it was set up in 1996 and began broadcasting a year later before being finally wound up in April 2002 by the High Court. The station was launched by a consortium that included Ireland's state broadcaster, RTÉ, and aired a compilation of shows that had previously been aired by RTÉ in Ireland. It was initially carried by a number of cable providers, before being added to Sky Digital on 1 Oct 1998. The channel's original owners were RTÉ, UPC (owned by Liberty Global Europe and cable company Chorus) and Riordan Communications (involved in telecommunications companies active in rural Ireland).

Tara Television had an exclusive option to purchase the majority of RTÉ's programming, and this accounted for about 80% of the total programmes broadcast by the station, with the remainder being filled by programmes purchased from other networks. It mainly broadcast news bulletins and current affairs programming, as well as extensive coverage of Irish sport, in particular, GAA.

It was anticipated that Tara would pay royalties RTÉ to air these programmes, and it was also envisaged that this could eventually be extended to the United States, Canada and Australia. However, Tara wasn't to make a single payment to RTÉ in respect of this and was wound up in March 2002 in proceedings brought about by the state broadcaster. At the time it was taken off the air, RTÉ's stake stood at 20% and 80% was owned by UPC, but Tara had acquired debts that exceeding its assets by €22.8m (including loans of €18m from United Pan-Europe (UPC) and €2.7m from RTÉ).^[1] At the time of its closure it employed twenty people at its offices in Derry and London.^{[2] [3]}

In recent years, RTÉ have approached the issue of over-sea broadcasting through the use of its website to stream current affairs and news programmes, and through RTÉ International, the working title of a service which will operate in a similar manner to Tara Television.

[edit] See also

• Media in Ireland
• Television in Ireland
• List of defunct Irish television channels

[edit] References

• Farrel Corcoran, 'RTÉ and the Globalisation of Irish Television' (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2004) ISBN 1-84150-090-9

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