The fact that more Irish people are watching the RTE television news in the United States than they are in Ireland is all due to the brainchild of Patricia O’Reilly of Out of Ireland Television. Along with California advertising executive Bill Huber, O’Reilly launched the company in 1993, and the show now airs every Tuesday evening and Saturday afternoon on New York’s WLIW Channel 21.

Offering a mixture of interviews, both political and personality, entertainment, local events and the RTE news, the show reaches 30 million households across the United States and Canada each week. The audience is estimated to be 3.5 million, and is potentially much more.

As the program’s audience share rapidly grows, so does its list of sponsors, which currently includes Aer Lingus, Bord Failte, Chase Bank, Mutual of America, the American-Ireland Fund and Claddagh Jewelry.

Born in Clondalkin, Co. Dublin, O’Reilly emigrated to San Francisco in the early 1980’s, where she got her start in broadcast journalism. She returned to Ireland to earn a degree in politics and history in UCD and then moved to New York in 1989.

Since then, she has worked as a print and television journalist and regularly reports on the goings-on of the Irish in New York for RTE radio in Ireland.

Much of Out of Ireland’s success in attracting sponsors in those early days is attributable to O’Reilly’s interview with Sinead O’Connor, O’Connor’s first television interview since she made international headlines for tearing up a picture of the Pope on NBC’s Saturday Night Live.