FROM THE ARCHIVE OF: The TV Room
The 3pm RTÉ One junction. We haven’t got the date wrong – we know the ident featured here was replaced in autumn 1993. Read on for a full explanation.
Video content
[00:00:00] IDENT: yes, this RTÉ One ident was actually replaced in September 1993 – but somehow, almost two years after being decommissioned, it popped up in this junction.
Jump Around would normally have been shown on Network 2. However, presumably because of Wimbledon coverage on Network 2, it ended up on RTÉ One for a couple of weeks.
RTÉ TV didn’t risk the type of robotic video jukebox arrangements that ITV companies and later network BBC TV had, to play out ads and programme trails.
These machines would be programmed to pick out the appropriate ad/trail tape from a store of physical tapes. A robotic arm would fetch the tape and play it out live on air – for each individual ad and trail in the junction.
RTÉ instead played safe, pre-recording all the ads and continuity elements for each junction on a single tape, in the correct sequence. Less opportunity for things to go wrong, and for valuable ad revenue to be lost.
So what you see here is a pre-recorded sequence that had the RTÉ One ident, followed by Jump Around titles.
It may well be that the people who normally prepared the pre-recorded junction elements for Network 2 were still in charge of looking after these elements for the fortnight that the show was on RTÉ One.
This might explain how an old RTÉ One ident made it to air again. Regular RTÉ One pres staff wouldn’t have made such an error, one would think.
From what we can recall, the old RTÉ One ident aired in this junction for the two weeks that Jump Around was on RTÉ One.
[00:00:14] PROGRAMME: the opening titles for Jump Around. This was the summer replacement for The Den in 1995 and was presented by Joe Rooney and Agnes Detortois.
Jump Around ran from 26th June until 1st September.
Acknowledgements
PICTURED: Jump Around opening titles. COPYRIGHT: RTÉ.
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