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Every Friday, RTE ONE splits out to the regions of Dublin, Cork, and the West, for a new magazine service Nationwide Here and Now. Bringing them fifteen minutes of news, sport and information. Nationwide Here and Now is a pilot service - future plans include opt-outs for the entire country, daily regional coverage, and local Aertel pages. It has now been extended from its original ten week run, and plans are underway for regional news hubs in Cork and Galway, and a studio in Derry.

NB: For the most part, to recieve your relevant region, you will need to be watching RTE ONE on UHF, or a cable company sourced from the local UHF transmitter. The opt-outs are not generally carried on VHF except in parts of the West, as noted below. This allows you to watch regular Nationwide on VHF if you so choose. Before Christmas, Aertel was not carried during the opt-outs - it is now inserted into the Dublin feed (can people in the West and Cork confirm whether their opt-outs recieve teletext?). The opt-out actually lasts for the entire 25 minutes of the programme (from just after the RTE ONE ident until the RTE Cork ident at the end of the programme) - however during the final ten minutes viewers in opt-out regions recieve highlights of that weeks national programme.

You can watch all the opt-outs and the National programme at www.rte.ie/news/nationwide.html

RTE ONE Cork.
RTE Cork was the first RTE region to have regional opt-outs over 25 years ago - albeit on radio. Corkabout started as a single opt-out on the RTE Radio Service to develop into the RTE Radio Cork 89FM station, with several hours of RADIO 1 opt-outs a day. (Prior to Radio Eireann's establishment in 1936, Cork had its own service 6CK, the first non-Dublin broadcaster in Ireland ) Sadly with the rise of ILR (96FM and County Sound Radio), it was felt Radio Cork outlived its usefulness and it was closed in 1999. Yet the presence of Radio Cork led RTE to develop its only major studio complex outside Montrose in Cork. RTE Cork, opened in 1995, became a large contributor to network output on both RADIO 1 and RTE ONE. RADIO 1`'s overnight service is operated out of Cork.

Now, with the launch on a pilot basis of Here and Now - Cork, local output has returned to RTE Cork. The Here and Now - Cork team consists of Martina O'Donoughue, Grett O'Conner, and sports commentator Ger Canning, focusing on news, information and sport in the South.

RTE ONE Cork is broadcast from the Collins Barricks transmitter and Spur Hill relay on UHF, and on Chorus' (Cork Communications) analogue cable systems in the region.

Here and Now - Galway
By far the largest of the three new regions is West. Headquatered in Galway, it streches all along the West Coast from Kerry to Mayo, including the major population centres of Limerick, Ennis, Sligo, and Castlebar. The Here and Now - Galway team is Sinead Ni Ghudihir, Bernadette Prendergast, and John Fallon NB: Even though the programme is called Here and Now - Galway it serves the entire West of Ireland. RTE ONE West is carried on UHF only for most of the region, however there are some patches where coverage is available on VHF - the only one of the three regions. It is also on NTL Galway. Strangely enough, all Chorus Digital viewers get RTE ONE West, not National as you might have expected... Email me)

Here and Now - Dublin
Eibhlin Ni Ruaric (left) and Michael Ryan present the Dublin version of Nationwide on a Friday night. The local content lasts for approxemetly half the programme, with regular output from the national programme for the second half - though the transmitter opt-out continues until the end of the credits. Here and Now - Dublin, aimed at a younger audience than the usual programme, focuses mainly on the Dublin social scene (aka clubbing), and appears to be produced soley by RTE Dublin with network output from RTE Cork. Here and Now - Dublin goes out on UHF from the Three Rock transmitter. It is carried by NTL Dublin (and Chorus North Dublin?). It is not however carried on VHF.

If you can suppy further information on your region, what transmitters are opting out etc, , e-mail me icdg@oceanfree.net