The RTÉ Regional, Wildlife and Education department continues to support blue-chip natural history wildlife series like the multi-award winning ‘Secrets of The Shannon’ and the beautiful and engaging series, ‘Ireland’s Oceans’. A new series, currently in production, ‘Ireland’s Wild Cities’, will explore the urban aspects of Irish wildlife.
Other regular series emanating from the wilds of Ireland are ‘Living The Wildlife’, ‘Tracks and Trails’ and ‘Ear To The Ground’. Education has recently broadcast the multi-part education series ‘Class Swap’, ‘The Family Project’ and ‘Building Ireland’ in pre-watershed slots and the acclaimed ‘Des Bishop - Breaking China’ in post-watershed.
This year, the department also scored notable critical successes with documentary projects like ‘Somebody To Love’, which has been sold into numerous European territories and scooped several awards. ‘Close To Evil’, a feature-length Holocaust documentary film garnered unanimously positive reviews and has attracted much international interest. ‘The Genealogy Roadshow’, which was developed with RTÉ Regional, has gone into a second series with PBS in the United States and ‘Celebrity Wild Trials’ has just been optioned for foreign territories.
The primary aim of this commissioning team is to enhance the RTÉ schedules (on RTÉ One and RTÉ 2) with innovative and thought- provoking programming, both in pre and post-watershed. This is achieved through a combination of full commissions, support for suitable, ambitious BAI projects, co- funded series and also backing attractive advertiser funded projects.
Observational series for RTÉ One can reflect the Irish experience, such as in series like ‘From Here to Maternity’ and a new upcoming series set in Shannon airport. The team is always looking for observational series set regionally and with unique access, strong characters and storylines that can typically develop over a six/nine month period.
The department is also on the lookout for specifically targeted RTÉ 2 proposals and four new 52 min documentaries from regional producers that will feature in the ‘Reality Bites’ strand in 2015. Format development is also of interest to RTÉ. They are open to discussing new format ideas and putting development funding in place for the right projects.
Programmes are scheduled in a range of evening slots and programme makers are encouraged to consider from the off where their ideas might play in the RTÉ schedule.
Openings are available to multi-part, half-hour projects in pre-watershed and post-watershed, multi-part 30/40 minute projects that can play in post-watershed and to documentary ideas that can play Mondays, RTÉ One at 9.35 (and elsewhere in the schedule). There is also interest in event-programming and one-offs, especially in the area of science.
The commissioners are interested in lightly-formatted ideas with broad appeal for family audiences, for example, ‘The Family Project’ and ‘The Irish Road To Cheltenham’. Alternatively, they are interested in series that reflect modern Irish life, either at home or abroad, and across a range of diversity topics and issues - sexual, physical, intellectual, race, gender etc.
We are open to new talent and formats designed to cast light on contemporary life and relationships and that are capable of attracting wide audiences to RTÉ One. Promising formats can be put into development and piloted.
Producers must submit ideas into the eCommissioning system: https://e-commissioning.rte.ie/SWIFT.Web/skins/rte/login.aspx
See here for more details on guidelines for each of the slots available.
