Council commissions tourism show for US TV

(Above) Belvedere House and Gardens.

Westmeath is set to feature on a specially commissioned television show that will broadcast across 240 channels in the United States.

At a recent online meeting of Westmeath County Council’s Economic Strategic Policy Committee (SPC), members allocated €10,000 to pay Peninsula TV to make that show, which will be part of the County by County series that is broadcast across the US.

Speaking at the meeting, director of services Barry Kehoe told members that Peninsula TV has already produced programmes for a number of counties, including Sligo, Galway and Kilkenny.

“If you were ever in the US, you will know that they have an awful lot of television stations with stuff streaming out all the time,” said Mr Kehoe.

“What they do is retransmit these programmes over and over again.

“There would certainly be a diaspora who would have Westmeath connections and there would also be people who are thinking of coming to Ireland after Covid, and this would probably hit some of those people and put Westmeath on the map to an extent.

“From a publicity perspective, that’s positive.”

Mr Kehoe said that in addition to promoting the county across the US, the “brilliant thing” from the perspective of the county council is that it will be able to use the content created by Peninsula TV on its own channels.

“I know Athlone.ie and Mullingar.ie are very interested in content.

“It’s new content, specially made, that we can put though Facebook and Instagram and the various other channels that we use.

“We can also put it up on our own websites. If we were to create this content ourselves it would probably cost us that €10,000.”