The Late Late Show was always a monster, but it lost its fangs. Ryan Tubridy’s departure gives RTÉ the chance to make much-needed changes

The Late Late Show was always a monster, and for some time now it has lost its fangs. The people who should have cared for it have neglected it. They never really liked it, but they can’t kill it because it earns them so much money: there is no alternative.

RTÉ director-general Dee Forbes gave her analysis on Thursday when, responding to Ryan Tubridy’s resignation as presenter, she told Bryan Dobson: “The world has changed. The world, when Ryan began 14 years ago, is now completely different and we are looking at a lot more fragmented viewing. People are viewing in different ways, but the engagement with the Late Late is second to none, but again people [are] watching live or watching catch-up.”

This much we all know. But you do wonder how exactly RTÉ management have been caring for the Late Late over the past 14 years. The show is longer than mass, and in the past 50 years mass has changed more than the Late Late has. The last big change to the programme was the move from Saturday to Friday night, and that was a quarter-of-a-century ago. Since then, RTÉ has let the Late Late go the way of the landline.

Saving the Late Late is not the job of a new presenter, no matter how talented. Ireland has never been short of good presenters – and the Late Late has had three of them – but in the modern world, nobody can make two hours of airtime into compulsive viewing.

This poor monster was born in another country, in another time. It was built around Gay Byrne, for Gay Byrne, and by Gay Byrne, who was also, in a piece of television genius, its producer. Its cultural task was enormous: to illustrate the changes that needed to be made in Ireland. It thrived on controversy. And it had to be entertaining.

It was old-style showbusiness, and also cutting-edge campaigning journalism, all wrapped up in a great circus of a programme, with Maureen Potter dropping in.

I’m not saying it was always fantastic television, but it was interesting a lot of the time. Now people under 40 don’t really watch television any more. They watch clips of the Late Late on social media, if they watch it at all.

And this is an international problem. The big talk shows in the US – the inspiration for the young Late Late in Ireland – are in trouble. When James Corden finishes on the American Late Late Show next month, he will not be replaced – the show itself will be replaced with a comedy slot.

It was this American style of talk show, brought to its peak by David Letterman with his goofiness and his desk and his backdrop of a cityscape at night – a look once closely copied in recent years by the Irish Late Late – that perhaps appealed most to Ryan Tubridy, with his love of east coast America in all its sophistication; Tubridy has never been more than a heartbeat from Hyannis Port.

But David Letterman never had to deal with running a cash competition or hosting a heat of the Eurovision Song Contest.

In the UK, The Graham Norton Show is never live; it is edited and it consists only of celebrity interviews. Its focus is narrow, its format is strict.

The Tommy Tiernan Show is also tightly focused and has the benefit of being edited. The Late Late, on the other hand, can be fed anything at all as it grinds interminably on.

And then there’s the tone. It has moved from confronting the country’s problems in its early days to constantly reassuring us of how fabulous we are. The classic Tubridy opening line of any interview with an international guest “Now, I know you love Ireland” is only a symptom of a deeper malaise. The Late Late has become not just anxious to be liked, but desperate to please. Confrontation is to be avoided at all costs.

In the years since the Late Late started, television has been infantilised. There are very few programmes for grown-ups anywhere any more. That’s why the streaming services and the podcasts are doing so well. They’re not dancing or baking competitions or home improvement shows (see Dream Kitchens & Bathrooms, RTÉ 2, Thursdays at 7pm, just before another bought-in programme, Grand Designs, at 8pm).

Which brings us to the Toy Show. Nothing controversial about kids, right?

Everyone always says Tubridy is so great with the Toy Show children, and that this has been the reason for the extraordinary growth of the phenomenon in recent years. But it could also be that he loves the Toy Show because he likes getting dressed up in funny costumes and messing about. Performing the musical numbers was one of the few times when he looked like he was enjoying himself.

However, the main programme never explored that playful side of Tubridy and what could be done with it. It was back to family tragedies and heroic personal struggles. Meanwhile, Ant and Dec are providing the purest of light entertainment on their Saturday Night Takeaway.

The point is that the Late Late is not too big to fail but too big to succeed. RTÉ has never had the courage to cut it, or to focus it, because of the advertising revenue it fears losing.

Now it is presented with a real crisis, or, to put it another way, a real opportunity to make changes that should have happened decades ago.