Sport

Final stretch Kilkenny v Tipperary - five days to go

Compiled by SEAN MORAN

Tue Aug 30 2011 - 01:00

Compiled by SEAN MORAN

Peak audience

THE weekend was a good one for senior GAA broadcaster RTÉ. Sunday’s Dublin-Donegal All-Ireland semi-final may have been widely declared a turn-off but it attracted a peak audience of 934,000 and an average of 700,000 – the biggest GAA audience of the season.

Last year in another broadcasting milestone for Tipperary-Kilkenny All-Ireland finals, the match attracted the biggest sports audience of the year and the second biggest of all RTÉ’s 2010 output - behind only The Late Late Toy Show.

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TOP FIVE IRISH SPORTS BROADCASTS 2010

1. All-Ireland hurling final, Tipperary v Kilkenny 979k (average)

2. All-Ireland football final, Cork v Down 770.4k

3. FIFA World Cup final, Spain v Netherlands 762.2k

4. All-Ireland football semi-final, Cork v Dublin 629.5k

5. Six Nations rugby, France v Ireland 618.9k

Minor triumph: TV3 come up with perfect solution for language dilemma

LAST week’s announcement by TV3 that the station had found an ingenious solution to one of the big questions facing its GAA coverage completes a serendipitous season for the broadcaster.

Having deliberated on whether to provide commentary in English or as is traditionally the case with the All-Ireland minor finals – and the preferred option in Croke Park – as Gaeilge, the station opted to broadcast in both, with the first official language the medium on TV3’s second channel 3e.

The station is now at the end of year one of its second broadcasting deal with the GAA, which has seen it secure more extensive rights than in its original contract in 2008. During the three years of that initial agreement TV3 showed itself particularly partial to matches involving Dublin, with 10 of its 30 live fixtures featuring the county.

Those proportions may have shrunk this season but the unusual deal that allows the station broadcast access to the All-Ireland minor finals has come up trumps with Dublin reaching both hurling and football deciders for the first time since 1954 when the county won the minor double, against Tipperary and Kerry – a team featuring the poet Brendan Kennelly – respectively.

This isn’t the first time Tipperary-Kilkenny finals have featured watershed developments in the field of live television. Twenty years ago the final between the counties was the last to which RTÉ held the overseas rights and 20 years before that the same pairing became the first All-Ireland broadcast in colour.