TV3 hoping GAA coverage pushes the right buttons

AT 1pm tomorrow, GAA fans across the country will have to break the habit of a lifetime. It will be a minor alteration in practical terms, but its significance for the GAA and broadcasting in this country will be seismic.

Rather than push the ‘2’ button on their remote controls, thousands of people will be diverting their fingers mere millimetres to the right to take in the game that will truly launch this year’s Munster Hurling Championship.

Waterford and Clare is a tasty enough encounter in its own right but viewers born and bred on a basic diet of RTÉ coverage will be running the rule over TV3’s first live championship broadcast. A nation expects.

Pilloried in the past for their soccer coverage, the channel pulled up its socks considerably for last year’s Rugby World Cup and further improvements are expected for their handling of what is, after all, a national institution.

“I have been doing GAA programming for ten years now. It is a sport I care passionately about. I grew up with it,” says the series producer Ciarán Ó hEadhra.

“You get a sense that, because of the nature of the organisation and how it is structured, you are looking after something that every community feels they have an interest in. We are very conscious of that and we are taking it on board.”

It is virgin territory for a channel whose sports coverage has been saturated with soccer since its launch ten years ago, but the team behind the scenes has its fair share of old sweats when it comes to broadcasting Gaelic games.

Asgard and Motive Television are the two companies entrusted with producing the series for the Ballymount-based station and, between them, they bring employees with a wealth of experience on shows such as Park Live, BBX and Setanta’s GAA output.

“That was one of the things that we were trying to do, to get a very experienced GAA team together, not just in front of the camera but behind the camera. RTÉ have been doing this for the better part of 30 years and they do it very well.

“So, for us, we knew that the audience would have a certain expectation of the level of production in order for us to hit the ground running. To achieve that from day one we had to get the right people involved.”

Ó hEadhra spent five years on the Breaking Ball show and has amassed thousands of man hours for TG4 and Setanta, where he was involved in the station’s launch as well as its rugby and motorsport coverage.

But he says all that pales into significance with what he is undertaking this summer, and the scale of the project is indeed daunting.

Their ten live fixtures include three provincial finals and, on any given day, they will be operating with Matt Cooper as studio anchor, three studio analysts, two sideline reporters, a match commentator and co-commentator and 40 crew between the stadium and the studio.

Each broadcast will last for three hours, leaving 60 minutes for discussion at the beginning of the programme and another 45, roughly, at the end. The station has promised that there will be no studio “pantomime” but the line-up of analysts is nonetheless promising.

Eugene McGee, Liam Hayes and Liam Griffin are veterans at the analysis game and new boys like Joe Kernan and David Brady come rich with promise. With 180 minutes to fill, every cog will play a vital role both in front of the camera and behind it.

“People often talk about public service remits or commercial remits. This is the largest statement of TV3’s interest in Gaelic games and we are talking about an all-station approach,” says Ó hEadhra.

“You are going to see it on Ireland AM, on the Thursday night programme ‘Championship Throw-In’ and news bulletins. TV3 have embraced the GAA at the first opportunity they have had to be involved in it.”

Theme tunes and the like are being kept largely under wraps for now. A contemporary feel has been promised but it remains to be seen if they push the boat out to the extent ‘The Sunday Game’ has with its new, slightly confusing, studio design.

Remote controls across the island will deliver the verdict in the weeks to come.

“For me, I hope it will be a source of great pride,” said Ó hEadhra. “I hope we will have put out a broadcast that has been well received by the public. I hope we are given the chance to show how hard we have worked over the last few weeks. The people to benefit from that will be the public.”