Whilst monitoring RTÉ’s output yesterday for the first appearance of their Christmas idents, we got an unexpected surprise in the 6.01pm junction. And it wasn’t a nice one.
RTÉ One deployed a rather large graphic overlay to promote Irish Sign Language coverage of the latest Covid-19 announcement by An Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Micheál Martin, which would be carried live on their Six-One News programme.
The graphic obscured more than a third of the ident. Whilst we understand RTÉ’s desire to properly promote an important public service, did the pointer graphic really need to be as large as that?
Suddenly a ‘Subtitles’ tag in the corner of the screen doesn’t seem quite so bad!
Last time we checked, RTÉ One was still using an in-vision signer on one of their pre-2014 idents (featuring the previous RTÉ One logo) to introduce signed versions of programmes, shown overnight on the channel.
RELATED ARTICLE: Are all these subtitles reminders really necessary?
Acknowledgements
PICTURED: RTÉ One ident: Explorers. COPYRIGHT: RTÉ.