RTÉ tender offers more than €700,000 for maintenance for TV listings

Saorview is Ireland’s national free-to-air digital television service, and is wholly owned by RTÉ. It provides hundreds of channels’ worth of free-to-air content from Ireland, Europe, and further afield.

RTÉ is to spend more than €700,000 on the maintenance of its listings, including for Saorview and the RTÉ Guide, and may lean into AI-generated data to do so, according to released tender documents.

The broadcaster is to spend €727,000 over five years on a service to maintain the dedicated listings feeds.

“The ability to leverage automated/AI-generated metadata will be considered as an option in this tender,” the documents for the competition state. “RTÉ envisages a hybrid approach towards the implementation of AI, combining AI solutions with human oversight.”

The new five-year contract succeeds the existing commission held by the Press Association news agency which, when initially offered, was worth €600,000 and expires in May 2026.

Saorview is Ireland’s national free-to-air digital television service, and is wholly owned by RTÉ. It provides hundreds of channels’ worth of free-to-air content from Ireland, Europe, and further afield.

An RTÉ spokesperson said: “The purpose of the contract is to ensure the continued delivery of accurate, timely, and comprehensive programme metadata to support RTÉ’s broadcast, print, and digital distribution channels following the expiry of the current agreements on May 31, 2026.

“The successful tenderer will be required to supply, manage, and maintain all associated data feeds, including any necessary development work to support the Saorview mechanism.”

The tender calls for cybersecurity compliance, in terms of the “secure handling of RTÉ metadata and content assets” together with “secure system design... and data transfer”.

It says the successful bidder is expected to “maintain a highly reliable service with minimal downtime and to take full responsibility for managing and resolving any service interruptions”.

Of a potential service outage or degradation of service, RTÉ said the eventual contractor “will be required to notify the client promptly, provide clear information on the impact, and outline the steps being taken to restore normal operation”.

“The tenderer will also be expected to implement appropriate corrective actions to prevent recurrence,” the broadcaster stated.

The tender documents note that RTÉ intends to improve its own content’s discoverability across major current content platforms including Google TV, Amazon TV, and Apple TV — with tenderers expected to demonstrate how such performance can be achieved.