IRISH TV viewers will have free access to a proposed new channel devoted to Irish, European and international cinema. The Irish Film Channel will be one of many new services available when RTÉ 1, RTÉ 2, TV3 and TG4 switch from analogue to digital transmission.
That conversion is expected to be completed by 2012, although it is feasible that the new film channel will be on air within two years. The idea for the channel was proposed by the Irish Film Board to the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Eamon Ryan, who is about to present a new Broadcasting Bill in the near future.
“We asked the Minister if he would consider this specialist channel on the new system, and he was very supportive,” Irish Film Board chairman James Morris said in an interview with The Irish Times yesterday.
“It was very encouraging that he saw it as a genuine addition to the proposed new transmission platform, a position enthusiastically endorsed by the Minister for Arts, Sports and Tourism, Séamus Brennan.”
It is envisaged that the Irish Film Channel will operate 24 hours a day and that it will be free of commercials. The blueprint is for it to transmit three feature films in prime time from 6pm to midnight, Monday to Friday each week, and to repeat them over the following weekend.
One of the prime-time films every night will be an Irish film, with the other two slots dedicated to world cinema, which, in recent years, has been consigned to post-midnight scheduling by stations such as RTÉ 2, BBC 2 and Channel 4. “There is a gap there,” Mr Morris said, “because it’s so obvious that there’s a large Irish audience for non-mainstream films given that they are so successful at the main Irish film festivals.” Asked about the budget for the new service, Mr Morris said: “By any standards, it will be a modest, low-cost operation.”