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RTÉ could summon the ghost of legendary host Johnny Carson and it still wouldn’t save ‘The Late Late Show’

Pat Stacey

Refusal to change a tired format ensures flagship show remains a dull affair

Ryan Tubridy on his first appearance as 'The Late Late Show' host in 2009. Photo: Kryan O'Brien

March 17 2023 07:30 PM

Observing the changing of the guard on The Late Late Show over the last two decades has been a bit like watching a set dance performed on a spinning carousel.

When Gay Byrne stepped out in 1999, Pat Kenny stepped in. No surprise there. He was seen as very much the natural heir to the throne. After all, he’d had plenty of time to practise on his own chat show, Kenny Live, on Saturday nights.

When, 10 years later, Kenny decided it was time to call it a day, the choice wasn’t so clear-cut. Gerry Ryan, who was known to badly want the job, filled in for a single edition of The Late Late Show the previous year, when Kenny’s mother died suddenly.

He did a fine job too, albeit with a style very different from Kenny or Byrne. One can only wonder, wistfully, how things might have turned out for Ryan, on and off air, if he’d got the gig full-time.

Instead, the suits in RTÉ went for someone they considered a safer pair of hands: Ryan Tubridy. Like Kenny, he’d also had lots of practise for the role of Late Late host, having fronted Tubridy Tonight on Saturdays.

Hosting your own Saturday night chat show isn’t a prerequisite for landing the Late Late job, but it certainly seems to help.

News of Tubridy’s abdication on Thursday was still warm from the PR oven when speculation about his successor began. The bookies’ favourite is Miriam O’Callaghan, with Claire Byrne and Brendan O’Connor in the frame, and various other familiar and predictable RTÉ faces making up the numbers.

Frankly, I couldn’t care less who gets the job. It’s not likely to make any appreciable difference to the end product anyway. The fundamental problem with The Late Late Show as a vehicle is not the host, but the vehicle itself. It’s a rust bucket.

You could summon up the ghost of legendary American presenter Johnny Carson and the show would still be, to use a word Gay Byrne was fond of, banjaxed.

It’s often described as an institution, and it is. But only in the same way a drab, grey, weather-beaten old civic building in need of refurbishment is an institution.

It’s been crying out for an overhaul for years. The perfect time to do it would have been 2009, when Tubridy was appointed. It’s easy to forget that Tubridy Tonight was something of a departure for RTÉ chat shows.

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It was shorter (75 minutes when shorn of ad breaks), lighter and more loose-limbed, influenced more by the kind of shows Jonathan Ross and Graham Norton were doing rather than anything coming out of RTÉ.

It was still transmitted live – a continuing obsession of RTÉ’s – and there was still the inevitable competition. Nonetheless, the emphasis was on entertainment, not on debating pressing social issues that were already being debated on current affairs programmes, or on beating viewers into a state of numbed boredom with worthy but dull human-interest stories.

In short, it was fun. Back then, a radical shake-up of the Late Late designed to broaden its audience appeal and attract interest from a younger generation might just have saved it from the mediocrity into which it descended and has been mired ever since.

It may be hard to believe now, but Tubridy, who was 36 when he took over from Kenny, possessed a certain amount of freshness and vitality. He was lively and enthusiastic.

Importing some of the elan he displayed on Tubridy Tonight into The Late Late Show would have been easy to do if RTÉ had the will and the nerve to revamp a stale format.

There were a number of things that could have been done. Pruning the running time a little to make the show less unwieldy would have been a start, as well as introducing more pre-recorded items and steering clear of anything too heavy or depressing.

Ruthlessly slashing the amount of time spent plugging other RTÉ shows – something that’s become a real turn-off – would have been a positive move. (Is it really necessary to have Dermot Bannon on every time there’s a new season of Room to Improve starting the following Sunday?)

Another idea would have been to have the various guests stick around and interact, rather than slipping away when they’ve done their bit. This, by the way, isn’t exactly a new idea. It’s what used to happen when Gay Byrne was running the show.

There were rumours back in 2009 that the Tubridy era would mark a new, revivified Late Late. There would be big changes to fit the new man’s style. It never happened. The only things that changed during Tubridy’s 14 years at the helm were the set and the arrangement of the theme tune.

The format is set in stone. If anything, the show, which is finding it harder and harder to locate good guests (hence all those repeat appearances by in-house faces), has gone backwards. No wonder Tubridy is stepping down; he must be exhausted.

Is it too much to expect that a change of host might, at last, prompt a long-overdue change of format too? Yes, it is.

The Late Late Show still pulls in a hefty audience – that strange cohort of viewers who will watch it no matter who the guests are or what might be on the other channels at the same time. Consequently, it pulls in hefty amounts of advertising revenue too.

As far as RTÉ is concerned, things are just hunky dory the way they are. And that, unfortunately, is the way they’re going to stay.

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