Keane, Nevin documentaries big successes for Irish TV

Documentaries on Terry Keane and Catherine Nevin were major successes for Irish television stations in last month's A. C. Nielsen ratings.

RTE's documentary on the life of Ms Keane attracted 583,000 viewers.

A programme on the Catherine Nevin trial the week before was one of the most popular in TV3's history. When first broadcast on April 18th, The Nevin Trial attracted 227,000 viewers, while another 158,000 people watched a repeat the next weekend.

The Keane documentary was the 10th most popular programme on Irish television last month. Four of the top nine slots were taken by Coronation Street, which attracts up to 750,000 viewers per episode. The other five were taken by the Irish soaps, Fair City and Glenroe, and an Irish-made film, This Is My Father.

RTE's political satire, Bull Island, beat the station's news programmes. The Easter Sunday Bull Island special was watched by 555,000 people, earning it 12th place in the ratings, two places ahead of the average figure for RTE's most popular news programme on Fridays at 9 p.m. RTE's news programmes took another three of the top 20 slots.

The Late Late Show came one place behind Bull Island, with an average 535,000 viewers.

The soccer Champions League, the sitcoms Friends and Ally McBeal, and the Australian soap, Home And Away, are RTE Network 2's most popular programmes. Repeats of the late Dermot Morgan's Father Ted still attract average audiences of almost 300,000.

On TV3, Sunday films, The Devil's Own and Dante's Peak were the most watched programmes. None of the commercial station's daily news programmes featured in its Top 20.

RTE1 secured 28 per cent of the time Irish viewers spent watching television. Network 2 got a 17 per share of the domestic TV market, TV3 got 9.5 per cent, while Irish-language TG4 got only 2 per cent.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for RTE has played down reports that Bryan Dobson or Anne Doyle will be moved from presenting the station's main news programmes to be replaced by the US correspondent, Mark Little, when he returns from Washington.

Mr Little, who has been in the United States since October 1995, is expected to remain in Washington until after the US election in November.

An RTE spokesman refused to comment on whether he would be the station's main news anchor when he comes back to Montrose, other than to say: "Obviously a broadcasting role will have to be found for Mark when he returns".

roddyosullivan@ireland.com