RTÉ’s “digital lab” for commissioning short-form content specifically for the Player – part of its five-year strategy plan – will be in operation from January. “Originals” on the RTÉ Player, mostly aimed at 15-34-year-olds, include The Doireann Project, Aoife Dooley’s “pure gas animation” Your One Nikito and a direct attempt to tap into the Instagram demographic with Capsule, a fashion series in which six Irish bloggers talk about clothes. The Player also “resurfaces” archive content – such as the “throwback to 2010” for the “most ridiculous moments” on reality show Fade Street – and has a much greater focus on “original” short-form content. There’s also an eclectic smattering of international series, from Clique to Swedish Dicks to Berlin Station, while anyone who fancies reliving the Pacey-Joey-Dawson love triangle from the turn of the millennium can do so via all six seasons of US teen drama Dawson’s Creek. These revolve around the catalogue of RTÉ-commissioned drama and comedy from the past decade – Hardy Bucks, Striking Out, Charlie, Can’t Cope Won’t Cope, Acceptable Risk, Clean Break – and some older fare like Bachelors Walk.Īll five seasons of Raw (the show Derry Girls creator Lisa McGee did for RTÉ) and Love/Hate are there, plus every episode of Room to Improve. What’s on it?Īs well as the capacity to stream programmes live (hopefully with less buffering from now on) and on catch-up (alas, no downloads are possible), the new RTÉ Player boasts a modest bunch of boxsets. The new RTÉ Player (beta version) is online now and will be rolled out to mobile and tablet app versions as well as to a range of other connected devices within days.ĭescribed by RTÉ head of online Aoife Byrne as “a massively ambitious project to get over the line”, the new Player is RTÉ’s greatest recognition yet that viewers no longer turn to video-on-demand merely to “catch up” on shows they missed on a linear television channel.įor those younger viewers who may neither own a traditional television set nor subscribe to a pay-TV package, Player apps can be the main port-of-call and perhaps even the only interaction they have with a broadcaster’s brand. It’s been in the pipeline for about three years, but a new iteration of the RTÉ Player is finally here – sort of.

Hardy bucks rte player