There was one noticeable absentee from the sports segment of RTE’s Nine News on Sunday.
Irish MMA fans were left a bit perplexed when tuning into the late news broadcast on Sunday to find that the biggest sports story of the day wasn’t covered in the broadcast.
Conor McGregor suffered his first ever UFC loss to Nate Diaz via second round submission in the early hours of Sunday morning and the story was covered by outlets across the globe. However, although it featured in both RTE’s One o’clock and Six One bulletins, it was nowhere to be seen in the Nine o’clock news.
IT'S ALL OVER!!!
Diaz submits @TheNotoriousMMA in Round 2! #UFC196 https://t.co/CAFnZzxXvq— eir Sport (@eirSport) March 6, 2016
RTE explained to SportsJOE that they had planned on running a report on McGregor’s loss, but it was cut at the last minute.
“A report on the McGregor fight was also in the running order in the sport news on our Nine o’clock news bulletin last night, however during the actual programme a number of live links ran over.”
“By the time the extent of the over-run was calculated fully the programme was already in the sportsnews section and and the only item they could cut to make up the same time as the over run at that point was the McGregor report.
They added that “it is extremely regrettable but unfortunately situations like this can happen on occasion during live broadcasts.”
