Also people are less likely to enjoy the full catch-up experience at work.” RTÉ’s online strategy for 2011 – ‘social, social, social’ “I guess that is a reflection of busy lives, people like to relax and watch a full programme and it seems to be taking them more time than before. She said that peak viewing times on the iPad are between 9pm and 11pm, which I thought was quite strange, considering that is also the period for prime-time TV. Most popular right now are The Late Late Show, Mrs Brown’s Boys and Grey’s Anatomy, as well as local shows, like Hardy Bucks, Savage Eye and Fade Street.” You have a choice of what you want to consume.

McCabe said the on-demand content revolution is in full swing. RTÉ layered live streaming with the NewsNow iPad app, along with on-demand clips. “To give you context, there were some 25,000 iPads sold so far, so that has been a total success.” McCabe said some 14,000 people downloaded the recently launched NewsNow iPad app. Overall, RTÉ’s mobile apps strategy is blazing ahead. McCabe agreed that agreeing rights with content owners is challenging in the case of bringing out products like the RTÉ Player, but the broadcaster has been making good headway. For example, we launched the iPlayer XL on the PlayStation 3 and some of our viewers plug their laptops into the large-screen TV at home via a HDMI input.” “Because we focus on the small screen (phone), middle screen (PC) and large screen (TV) as a strategy, we had to prioritise certain things over others. When we launched it two years ago, the first thing we wanted was to make it international and in January last year we launched an international version ahead of worldwide players. “ Mobile has always been on the road map for RTÉ Player. However, the head of platform development at RTÉ, Aisling McCabe, confirmed last night that mobile apps are in the works and will debut later this year. In recent months, RTÉ told that no imminent plans were in place to release iOS or Android apps. The broadcaster says the upcoming apps will contain ‘social’ features to suit today’s generation of watch-tweet-and-share viewers. RTÉ has confirmed it will be releasing iPad, iPhone and Android versions of its successful RTÉ Player catch-up TV service later this year.

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