UPC – Joerg's Ramblings

I am definitely not a branding expert and while I am currently trying to learn a little more about the intricacies of branding, I will still guess and interpret my way through this This is Odd piece. ;-) It is about TV3s rebranding.

TV3 was bought in July 2015 by Virgin Media for EUR 80mio. Before that TV3 started in 2008 and was a struggling commercial competitor to RTE’s tax-payer-funded semi-state TV empire. In 2014, TV3 had losses of 7mio and in 2015 of 17mio, so things could have been better for them, but Virgin Media’s buyout of the TV station changed the picture.

Virgin Media has an even more illustrious past: There were originally NTL and Telewest in the UK. They merged and then bought Virgin Mobile UK. The three companies then signed a deal with Richard Branson that gave them the right to use Branson’s brand “Virgin”. So Branson doesn’t own any part of the company, but gets money for his name (a license deal) but when the Cable TV company UPC in Ireland became Virgin Media, Richard Branson was paraded around like he was the boss. Virgin Media, however is owned by Liberty Global, a huge American TV and telecommunications company. UPC also was owned by Liberty Global, hence the deal to merge the Irish UPC into the Virgin Media brand. So Virgin Media provides Telecommunications services, Cable TV and then bought TV3 to add TV services to their Irish portfolio. In 2015 TV3 bought the UTV TV channel, which was created only a very small number of years before and had failed miserably. (I could make it more complicated by explaining how TV3 had licensed ITV content, but lost that to UTV, when UTV’s channel launched in Ireland. ironic that it all came back to TV3 when TV3 bought UTV. But I don’t want to make it tooo difficult to follow. :-) )

That bought UTV channel was renamed into “Be3” in January 2017 to create the three stations TV3, 3e and Be3. A somewhat odd and inconsistent branding mess, one could say and Virgin Media wanted to sort it out by rebranding all of them to VM1, VM2 and VM3. In autumn of 2018 all the new names were meant to be adopted. But this week (08 March) TV3 declared that a rebranding was not the highest priority right now.

The new mother company and the available money and TV3s new confidence meant that TV3 successfully won broadcasting rights to all Six Nations Rugby Games from 2018-2021 in addition they still have broadcasting rights for UEFA Champions League and a number of other football tournaments. And then there are the drama series that TV3 has access to.

All these successes are linked to TV3 and it took a good bit of an effort to create the brand link of series and sports events with TV3. And if everything got renamed (probably for a high cost) now the branding would have to be created from scratch.

So does it make sense or does it not make sense to postpone the rebranding? I think it probably makes sense, but remember that I said that I am no expert! ;-)

Internet Censorship to hit Ireland

EMI, Sony, Warner Music and Universal won a court case against UPC, Imagine, Vodafone, Digiweb, Hutchison 3G Ltd and Telefonica O2 Ireland Ltd forcing them to block access to PirateBay websites within 30 days (Eircom had already given in years ago). www.rte.ie/news/business/2013/0612/456177-pirate-bay-court/ This is the first time – but won’t be the last time – when the Irish SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) legislation that thanks to Junior Minister Sean Sherlock and the current Fine Gael government will bring various forms of Internet censorship to Ireland.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not in favour of Copyright Infringement and Online Piracy. It is illegal and therefore its status is clear. However, ThePirateBay.org does not provide illegal content, it is just a listing or linking site (not much different than Google in its concept). And blocking access to it, is not much different than blocking access to websites that list organisations that the government of the day does not like.If that was something we heard about from China, we would all be in uproar about the oppressive government.

Find out more about the law that is used to force the Internet block here www.stopsopaireland.com/#3 Worryingly, the same law can be used to block complete access to Facebook, YouTube and all other similar websites if ANYBODY from ANYWHERE in the world ever posted material on these platforms that infringes any copyright. Is the Chinese situation now that far fetched?

What does the ruling mean for you? If you use any of the listed providers for Internet connectivity, you will soon not be able to reach the Pirate Bay website anymore if you are a normal Internet user. However, the decentralised structure of the Internet will mean that a total block is close to impossible for people “in the know”.

And there is another interesting side-effect: The National Broadband Plan in Ireland for which your taxpayer money is used, is TOTALLY overspec’d now. Because 99% of users will never be able to use their super-high-bandwidth Internet connection to the max, if they don’t use it to download illegal material.

Joerg's Ramblings

Tag: UPC

TV3 Rebranding – Now on hold

Internet Censorship to hit Ireland