[Rdd]

What’s the story behind C4 being available in Ireland? I might be making this up but I feel like I remember reading that it long predated BBC One and Two being available on cable and satellite there. It has its own advertising region so must have a substantial audience. I remember when Big Brother was at its peak they had separate ROI voting numbers.

Was it available there from launch? Google’s not being particularly helpful.

It was, but as for predating BBC, god no, cable in Ireland exists because of the BBC & ITV - Dublin was a sea of high mast aerials for BBC and ITV in the 1960s which urban legend has it was an aircraft navigation hazard (not sure if that’s really true). The early systems would have just carried RTE TV, BBC 1&2 and depending on the area UTV or HTV or both. The companies that had both UTV and HTV replaced HTV with Channel 4 in or around launch day, the ones that just had HTV added S4C instead (like Wales itself, they wouldn’t get Channel 4 till digital came along). 

Skipping ahead a bit, ITV left cable in Ireland more or less entirely on 1st January 2015. Channel 5 was never really on it.