Early liaison with the RTÉ Press Office, and quality publicity tools, are key to securing highly sought after features and TV highlights.

Advice regarding publicity tools
In order to generate the best publicity tools and maximise the chance of press attention and high viewership, get in touch with one of the Senior Press Officers at commission stage. Outline the concept of your programme, and the RTÉ Press Office will advise you as to what aspects of your programme the press are most likely to be interested in.

This early conversation is essential. Please call Sharon Brady at 2083161 or Joseph Hoban at 2082399.

The RTÉ Press Office publishes, weekly, an on-line Press Pack accessed by hundreds of journalists and television editors in Ireland and the UK. Your programme will get a dedicated page within this Press Pack, and so it's essential that you read and follow the guidelines below.

Please look now at the RTÉ Press Centre, at www.rte.ie/presspack. Username: release.
Password: moonwalk.

In terms of generating publicity the following tools are essential

• Billings information - a two sentence description of programme or episode content (for listings information only) at least three weeks in advance of TX.
  
• Images - it is essential to take photographs while your programme is in production. A drama series typically requires both character stills and episodic narrative shots. In general, the RTÉ Press Office require ten good high resolution jpegs per programme. See below for more guidelines on this essential requirement. Please note that if you do not supply images the RTÉ Press Office will not be in a position to supply screen grabs or other low resolution alternatives.
  
• A press release - four or five paragraphs outlining the most salient, interesting and unique aspects of this particular programme at least three weeks in advance of TX, which will be used to generate features and highlights.
  
• Copies of the programme - it is essential to supply the TV Press Office with either a) one broadcast quality digibeta, b) multiple VHS copies or c) multiple DVD copies of your programme at least three weeks in advance of TX. If your programme is a drama or ongoing series, please supply the first two programmes if possible. The RTÉ Press Office supplies programme copies to key contacts in press, TV and Radio to generate features and TV highlights primarily, but not exclusively, with television journalists.
  
• Interview access - please arrange in advance with presenters or central protagonists that they are both willing and available to be interviewed in the weeks leading up to transmission of the programme.

Please note that all press liaisons must be conducted through the RTÉ Press Office.

Deadlines and lead-in times

The RTÉ Press Office work three weeks in advance of transmission to accommodate print deadlines for national newspapers and supplements.  It is not within the control of the RTÉ Press Office to change this deadline. It is therefore critical that these deadlines are met. 

The absolute print deadline for supplements is two weeks before transmission. However, competition for space within these supplements and guides is strong, and it is therefore necessary to begin to negotiate for this space at least a further week in advance as competition for space and features in supplements is strong.

A picture tells a thousand words .!

Television is a visually driven medium, therefore the provision of quality images to represent your programme is of paramount importance in terms of publicity. Visual TV highlights are often selected by picture editors who have made this judgement solely on the quality of images available, and not by the potential quality of the programme.

The images supplied should be

• Outstanding in terms of visual quality; crisp, colourful, eye-catching.  A grab from the footage cannot compete with the high quality images supplied by other programmes
• The narrative of the picture should directly relate to the content of the programme
• The image must be simple to accommodate the fact that it will be significantly reduced in size for print. (When considering the composition of a picture, remember a highlight image  is approximately twice the size of a stamp!).