If there's one thing TV loves, it's a good vote. Swathes and swathes of time is set aside, schedules are cleared, and every possible staff member is dragged in to cover it. And yesterday was no different.

Although the Lisbon referendum didn't get nearly as much coverage on Sky News or the BBC as last year's treaty vote (they focused mainly on what it means for Britain's stance on Europe), RTE got stuck in, dedicating six hours and 15 minutes of its daytime programming to an all-out Lisbonfest – and that's not including the amount of time it took up on all the individual news programmes and bulletins throughout the day.

Of course, unfortunately for TV, there wasn't much to talk about, because as soon as the boxes were opened, the result was almost immediately apparent.

It was a big fat Yes, and now across radio and television, we were about to have an entire day dedicated to re­peating this.

At least, Sean O'Rourke on RTE Radio One had the good grace to apologise to listeners for not getting them the cliff-hanger they wanted.

While TV3 decided to stick to Emmerdale and Coronation Street during the day, finally hitting us with Vincent Browne at 5pm, RTE had rolling coverage.

Mark Little and Bryan Dobson were going to be hard pushed from the offset to keep things even vaguely entertaining, especially considering they were stuck with opening credits that looked like an instructional video for some kind of industrial machinery.

Initially, the coverage was blighted by vox pops, where members of the public spoke about "the EC" and 1916, and a baby with crazy eyes stole the show early on. Technical hitches abounded, the studio was packed with a rotating panel of Gary Murphy from DCU, Pat Cox, David Davin-Power and so on.

For most of the day, endless tallies were pored over as if they were ultimately important. Yes meant yes, and numbers were irrelevant.

At 11.20, Little casually mentioned that Declan Ganley had conceded. Shortly after that, Ganley was beamed through live where he proceeded to embark on a remarkable speech flattering Fianna Fáil. It was so overblown that one expected him to descend to one knee at the end, remove a purple velvet box from his breast pocket and ask for Brian Cowen's hand in civil partnership. "This is an overwhelming Yes vote... politically it was a masterful campaign from a masterful politician who made glove puppets of the opposition," Ganley gushed.

He also had a dig reserved for Fine Gael: "I got a text from a senior Fine Gael operative this morning saying 'go quietly'."

It was a day in TV of repeated phrases and dodgy metaphors. Better, stronger. Good day for Ireland, and a good day for Europe. Swing. Most politicians gave citizens a pat on the head for giving them the result they wanted.

'David and Goliath' as an analogy for the No side versus the Yes was an early phrase presented by Richard Greene from Cóir and repeated throughout the day. "It was always going to be a David and Goliath struggle," he told Brian Dobson, before announcing oddly: "Our posters were the winners of the poster competition."

"The battle to kill this dead treaty is not over," Green declared at the end of the interview. At that stage, Dobson was already jaded: "I don't want to refight the campaign, it's over now," he said wearily, "we're not going through it all again."

Cowen's rather mundane speech at Government Buildings got blanket coverage on television here and internationally.

"We as a nation have taken a decisive step for a stronger, fairer, better Ireland... this is what the EU is all about, states working together to achieve the common good," then massaging the public some more, "the full and final credit for this victory rests with the Irish ­people."