OH DEAR, IT’S another bump in the road for UTV Ireland. The National Television Awards took place tonight and were broadcast live from The O2 London. Evidently, a LOT of Irish people were looking forward to watching them.

The only problem was, they were exclusively broadcast on ITV, and our new transition meant that we couldn’t tune in–as UTV Ireland didn’t have the rights. As they explained over and over and over again.

Pray for whoever is running UTV Ireland’s social media right now.

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It’s never-ending.

Awkward.

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As goes the spiel, UTV Ireland are saying “unfortunately we just don’t have the broadcast rights for the NTAs so we’re unable to show it”.

Their FAQ clears things up.

UTV in Northern Ireland is an affiliate of ITV1. This means that all programmes made for ITV’s main channel are available to UTV. UTV Ireland is a stand alone channel and does not automatically have these rights. Programmes made by ITV Studios, such as Emmerdale or Coronation Street are all available on UTV Ireland.

Some programming such as Broadchurch, which is not made by ITV was already sold to other broadcasters in Ireland. UTV Ireland has no access to this content at the moment. Where this happens, UTV Ireland will show programmes of a similar style.

Guess it’s straight to the ITV player tomorrow.

People were really upset UTV Ireland replaced The Dark Knight with Pat Kenny>

No, you can’t watch the original UTV on Irish telly any more>