[RhysJR]

Well lets look at VM1 news output

Ireland AM has news summaries at every half hour from 7am to 10am

News at 12.30, News at 5.30 and News at 7, all half hour news programmes

Tonight Show incorporates news into their show, but they don't do any Friday edition, which I guess means no late news update on a Friday?

Weekends, they have a half hour of news at 5.30, which in some ways resembles Channel 4 News here in the UK, who provide on half hour of news on a Saturday and Sunday.

Ireland AM also airs at weekends from 9am to Midday with news headlines part of those three hours

All in all I believe this is excellent provision, and add along The Six O'Clock Show (starting at 6.05pm for some reason) they do have plenty of home produced content, well all coming from their two television studios in Dublin, which makes it cheap to produce

Considering RTE 1 doesn't even bother to offer an alternative breakfast show, and considering RTE 1 just starts their news at 1pm on RTE 1, I have to say Ireland AM has tapped into the small but decent morning viewership which RTE seem happy to abandon

As regards to Christmas, I think we can excuse them providing a large news service over the festive season, as it is a time when most people avoid news

That is exceelent news provision across Irish broadcasters. Compare that to how the broadcast landscape is deteriorating in New Zealand, despite both having similar populations (around five million). And arguably Ireland is in closer orbit to another, bigger English language market as well.