The Voice

 January 8th will see RTÉ launch one of their biggest properties of 2012: The Voice. The Voice is the newest talent show which has been taking the world by storm and has already been a huge hit in Holland and the US. The talent search will see celebrity coaches Kian Egan, Sharon Corr, Niall Breslin & Brian Kennedy picking a team of singers. While it sounds a lot like the X-Factor, the twist is that they select people based on their voice alone. The coaches will not get to see the act until they decide whether they want them on their team or not, as the auditions are held with the judges backs to the contestants. The judges and their acts will then battle against each other and enter the live final stages. Those who make it through will be coached by top recording artists and the winner of the show will be offered a recording contract with Universal Music.

RTÉ’s revenue is estimated to be down by 8%. Impacts continued to vary by audience on both terrestrial and satellite stations. Young audiences continue to be an issue for all stations with RTÉ impacts down by 14% and  TV3’s impacts down 1% for MCA15-34 s. This decline in impacts is making it slightly harder for the stations to deliver on campaigns against young adult audiences. However MC HW+CH were up on most stations with TV3 impacts up a massive 26% and Sky up 8%.  This was driven on TV3 with programmes like XFactor UK, XFactor USA and The Apprentice. Sky News coverage of the Euro Crisis rated well for this audience and helped push up impacts. On RTÉ this was mainly due to the coverage of Michael D. Higgins taking  office of President in November.

 Sky Group has announced that in 2012 they will opt out three new channels to ROI. “at the Races”  will launch on January 16th, while Sky2 and Sky Living+1 will launch from March 1st.

Sky Opt Outs 2012

This year’s Toy Story-themed Late Late Toy Show was watched by an average audience of 1,414,300 people1, an increase of almost 7,000 viewers on last year's record-breaking audience of 1,407,700 viewers1. 78% of Housekeepers with Kids and 86% of Kids watching TV at the time were watching the programme on RTÉ One, proving its enduring popularity with Irish viewers, both young and old.

The average audience for the Toy Show has grown each year since Ryan Tubridy first hosted it back in 2009. Given that last year's show was the highest rating Late Late Toy Show since 1994 , growing the audience again this year is a phenomenal achievement. This year's show attracted significantly more young Adults compared to last year. The average Live + VOSDAL ratings for Adults 15-24 and 15-34 year-olds at 26.40 and 29.67 represented increases of 24% and 14% on the average ratings achieved by the show in 2010. With an average Adult rating of 33.14, the programme ranks as the highest rating programme on Irish Television this year across all channels.

The Late Late Toy Show 2011 beats last  year's record-breaking audience

With Timeline, users will now have access to a new tool called Activity Log, which enables you to finely tune what appears on your Timeline; allowing you to “promote” a post to featured status, hide it from your Timeline or delete it altogether.

As with all major Facebook redesigns, Timeline was greeted with a fair share of criticism, with users concerned about the increased amount of personal info which could be easily accessible to others. Facebook is implementing a seven day grace period, where users can review anything that appears on the timeline and decide whether you want anyone to see it. The new profile will “go live” at the end of that seven-day review period.

YouTube for Schools, a new network setting which allows teachers to bring up useful educational videos only and keep students from being distracted by other content, such as music videos has been launched by YouTube.

Once the network setting is switched on, teachers can choose from the hundreds of thousands of videos on YouTube EDU created by more than 600 partners like the Smithsonian, TED, Steve Spangler Science, and Numberphile.

“Sight, sound and motion have always had the power to engage students and complement classroom instruction by bringing educational topics to life,” explained product manager Brian Truong.

“While schools that completely restrict access to YouTube may solve this distraction concern, they also limit access to hundreds of thousands of educational videos on YouTube that can help bring photosynthesis to life, or show what life was like in ancient Greece.

“To address this issue, we’ve developed, a network setting, ‘YouTube for Schools’, that school administrators can turn on to grant access only to the educational content from YouTube EDU,” Truong said.