The Irish Times reports that 80% of households in the Republic will have freeview coverage by the end of 2009. The switch-over for the Republic is meant to take place in 2012. As well as RTE1, RTE2, TV3 and TG4 there will be four new channels to encourage people to convert to digital earlier - those channels are Dáil TV, Irish Film Channel, RTE3 (mostly archive material) and RTE1+1.The SDLP are lobbying for all the southern broadcasters to join the free-to-view platform in the North. They believe "the government has a duty to extend the scope of availability of Irish broadcasting in Northern Ireland"(1) under the Good Friday Agreement and when the recent funding for the Irish Language Broadcasting Fund was renewed, the SDLP said that there is a "huge opportunity to boost the Irish...