Television coverage and rules issue: RTÉ has confirmed it will be phasing out Saturday evening live broadcasts from this summer.

This is in keeping with the stated desire of GAA officials to halt coverage of these matches, mostly qualifiers and replays, as they have been conflicting with club fixtures in the past three seasons.

Concern at this was echoed at the top level earlier this week when director general Liam Mulvihill said he believed the "Saturday live television spot will either have to move to mid-afternoon or cease".

RTÉ's head of television sport, Niall Cogley, confirmed that the GAA's reservations had prompted a re-think on the part of the broadcaster.

"Our relationship with Croke Park is a co-operative one of long standing and of understanding. For some time the GAA has pointed out that club fixtures are being damaged by these broadcasts and we don't want that to happen. We understand that the issue isn't a whimsical one.

"The Saturday evening broadcasts aren't generally as good in June and get stronger in July, which is when they run into (conflict with) club matches. Last year we had four of these matches in July and only one in June. This year we will be showing very few. I don't think there'll be any in July, although we're still finalising this summer's Gaelic games schedule. We're phasing out the July broadcasts."

The development is regarded as a setback given the strong ratings that the matches attracted, and the station hopes that some way of working around the issue can be devised when it starts to negotiate a new contract before the current agreement expires this summer.

"Looking forward, we'll be asking the GAA if there is any way of accessing this audience," said Cogley, "of being creative about the problem. Both of us are trying not to affect each other in the negative. This year the schedule is fairly advanced, but in the longer term our concern would be related to value (of the broadcast rights).

"From our point of view it does diminish what we hoped to have in terms of our broadcasts. In prime time the audience is already assembled and deciding what to watch rather than whether to watch.

"In the afternoon you have to create that audience, but in the evening the ratings surge and the GAA get greater exposure as a result.

"But that's a reflection of the general issue. The broadcasts have been too successful for their own good."

An example of the strength of the Saturday evening slot can be seen from last year's ratings for GAA matches. The biggest audience for any qualifier and the biggest for any single match outside the All-Ireland series was the meeting of Roscommon and Kildare in the All-Ireland qualifiers last July.

The audience was measured at 374,000 and placed sixth in the top 10 of live Gaelic games broadcasts. Another 10,000 viewers and it would have placed fourth and made the top 10 of all sports broadcasts last year.

Although the loss to the value of RTÉ's broadcasting rights will be a matter for negotiations when the contract's renewal gets under way, probably before the coming season concludes, according to Cogley it won't be an immediate problem during what will be a very busy summer for the national broadcaster.

"The prime-time issue is slightly different this year. The European (soccer) Championship will dominate the prime-time schedules for three weeks in June, and in August the Olympics in Athens are being held within our general time zone. So in the short term the GAA preference in this will have less impact."

"It's a tactical choice for the GAA: if they want to market their fixtures or if they're happy with exposure at this level. The downside of the prime-time broadcasts is the impact at club level. The other side of the coin is losing ground to other sports, which increasingly exploit this end of the schedules between the Premiership and Champions League in soccer, and even the Six Nations rugby is starting to experiment with it."

It is a hard call for Croke Park. Access to prime-time audiences has been confined to the Saturday evening broadcasts and having to set aside that access is a promotional blow, but the clamour from clubs and counties has been insistent, and, just before he left office over a year ago, former president Seán McCague raised the question of cutting back on live television coverage.

Trying to reconcile these conflicts will be a challenge in the coming negotiations.