In 1980, a new group called Coiste ar son Teilifís Gaeltachta (The Committee for Irish-Language Television) was set up. All radio and television services provided by RTÉ provided some Irish-language programming. In 1972, RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta (RnaG) was set up to provide Irish-language radio services across the country.
RTÉ and the Irish government had sought to improve the availability of Irish-language programming on RTÉ services. The three writers proposed small temporary buildings for Gaeltacht regional television services broadcasting a limited number of hours each night with programming coming from each of the Gaeltacht regions around the country. Bob Quinn is a film director who produced many documentaries and fiction films through the Irish language on limited budgets, including the first Irish-language feature film Poitín starring Niall Tóibín, Cyril Cusack and Donal McCann. In 1969, Lelia Doolan, Jack Dowling and Bob Quinn published Sit down and Be Counted, a book describing their campaign for a separate Irish-language television service. TG4 headquarters in Baile na hAbhann, County Galway (2014) All other content on the channel will be made available entirely in HD.
The daily Irish-language programme schedule is its core service: seven hours of programming in Irish supported by a wide range of material in other languages, mostly English. It has been reported to have a share of 2% of the national television market in the Republic of Ireland and 3% of the national television market in Northern Ireland. The channel has 650,000 viewers who tune into the channel each day to view a broad programming policy. It was followed by a fourth channel, TV3 (now called Virgin Media One), in 1998.
TG4 was the third national station to be launched in Ireland, after RTÉ One in 1961 (as Teilifís Éireann) and RTÉ Two in 1978. TG4 was formerly known as Teilifís na Gaeilge or TnaG, before a rebranding campaign in 1999. The channel launched on 31 October 1996 and is available online and through its on demand service TG4 Player in Ireland and beyond. TG4 ( Irish: TG Ceathair, pronounced ) is an Irish free-to-air public service television network. Worldwide (online with both live streaming and some of its programming) Wikipedia's multilingual support templates may also be used.
This article or section should specify the language of its non-English content, using for phonetic transcriptions, with an appropriate ISO 639 code.