As part of the new season on TV RTÉ today drop the RTÉ News NOW brand and replaced it with RTÉ News. The mobile phone application and the linear television channel will now simply be known as RTÉ News. The change took place at Mid-night on the 31st of August. The change is small with a few new features on the News app but the TV channel remains pretty much the same, RTÉ unable or unwilling to change the format of the channel, instead announcing the dropping of a word from one of their brands.

With COVID-19 around TV schedules were bound to be a bit bare. Though you might conclude that RTÉ\'s new season of programmes are as bare as they have been for the past ten years. RTÉ are asking audiences to \

RTÉ have made an application to the Department of Communication, Climate Action and Environment, DCCAE, to replace RTÉ News Now with RTÉ2 +1. It was reveiled earlier in the year that RTÉ had made the application to drop RTÉ News Now by their Head of News, Jon Williams. At the Public Account Committee, PAC, RTÉ's Director General, Deirdre Forbes announced plans to introduce RTÉ2 +1.

If you hadn't already noticed RTÉ (Ireland's National Public Service Broadcaster) has dropped it only adult news service on its second channel RTɲ. The Children's News programme News2Day continues on the channel from September to June each year but is currently on a summer break from RTÉ 2's TRTÉ strand.

With the arrival of UTV Ireland much of the programming that UPC customers enjoyed on UTV is available across a number of broadcasters. TV3 and RTÉ both hold some rights to ITV programming, hence why UTV Ireland doesn't carry those shows. UTV Ireland we imagine took the decision not to air the UK General election debate which aired on UTV, STV and ITV. RTÉ took the decision to air the debate on their dedicated digital news channel RTÉ News Now, but they also took the decision to interrupt that live broadcast for the RTÉ Nine O'Clock News, but why?

Over the past two weeks RTÉ have revamped the main RTÉ news programmes and their app RTÉ News Now. Both are cleaner than the previous rebrand which occurred in 2009. This is not an unusual exercise, to see a TV service update their website, news graphics and mobile apps on a cyclical basis. Strange that each of the changes took place at different times and announced at different press events.