In Ireland the creation of a national Irish language TV station is definitely credited with helping keep the language alive, and it is practically the same language. Gaelic language TV in Scotland would also have an audience here, and the two channels might even cooperate in programming.
I can easily see a gritty noir Gaelic language cop show taking the world by storm.
Fís Eireann (Screen Ireland) is another success story. Although they fund Irish filmmaking in any language, there have been a slew of very well received Irish language films lately. Most notably An Cailín Cúin (The Quiet Girl) which made history this year as the first Gaelic film to be nominated for an academy award for best foreign language film.
> In Ireland the creation of a national Irish language TV station is definitely credited with helping keep the language alive, and it is practically the same language. Gaelic language TV in Scotland would also have an audience here, and the two channels might even cooperate in programming.
This is definitely one of these cases where you feel that things that were around in your childhood have been around forever, but things introduced since then are new.
I'd assumed TG4 also dated from the 60s/70s like RTE and was going to comment that the time frames didn't really line up. Turns out it came about in 1996 - still over a decade before the current revival in interest, but much closer in overlap.
I'm old enough that I remember when it started up :)
Raidió na Gaeltachta was founded in 1972 (before my time), I think people often confuse or conflate the history of the two.
What's super confusing is the naming.
There were two stations at the time - rte1 and network2 (really just rte2). The Irish language channel launched as "T na G" or "Telifis na Gaeltacht" in 1996. Then TV3, an independent station, launched in 1998. Later TnaG rebranded as TG4, even though it predated Tv3, which itself has since rebranded as Virgin Media One.
I can easily see a gritty noir Gaelic language cop show taking the world by storm.
Fís Eireann (Screen Ireland) is another success story. Although they fund Irish filmmaking in any language, there have been a slew of very well received Irish language films lately. Most notably An Cailín Cúin (The Quiet Girl) which made history this year as the first Gaelic film to be nominated for an academy award for best foreign language film.