It’s the Late Late low...
Overhaul of Tubridy’s show on the cards as Friday night viewers down (while more and more watching later on the internet)
IT used to be a Friday night ritual in homes across the country.
But the number of people who now sit down to watch The Late Late Show live is at an all-time low – with RTÉ claiming more viewers are choosing to watch the programme on the internet at a time that suits them.
Viewership figures are now at their lowest since Ryan Tubridy began presenting six years ago.
Figures released to the Irish Mail on Sunday show that average viewing numbers for RTÉ’s flagship vehicle are down to 571,200 for the season just ended – from 582,800 last year.
The figures are the latest in a steady downward trend. At the end of 2014, Tubridy’s show had 612,000 viewers, with 634,000 tuning in the year before that. It’s a far cry from the one million viewers who tuned in to see him present his first Late Late Show in September 2009. Tubridy’s figures are now lower that Pat Kenny’s figures of 599,000 and 610,000 in his last two years at the helm. However an RTÉ spokesman said they are not worried by the figures, which they claimed reflect ‘the current television universe’ where people choose to watch shows on a variety of platforms.
‘The audience is broadly the same, but they are coming to The Late Late Show in different ways – on the iplayer, etc,’ he said.
The spokesman was also keen to point out that, although viewership figures had dropped, the show had increased its market share from 43% last season to 44% this year.
‘While there has been a very modest drop in terms of the thousands watching, The Late Late Show bucked industry trends this year and actually increased its share of the available audience watching at the time,’ he said.
Nonetheless, a senior editorial source within the organisation said that an overhaul of the programme is likely to be on the agenda for the incoming new director general, Dee Forbes. ‘I think even The Late Late Show’s own team would admit it’s in a need of a revamp,’ he said.
‘They had some big nights this year with the Toy Show and Valentine’s night, but it’s week to week where the figures are getting weaker. It could be that the new DG thinks it’s time for change.’
A poll taken last year by TheJournal.ie found that 78% of respondents said they would not miss the show if it went off air.
Two years ago in an interview with this paper, Tubridy admitted he is not funny enough to take on his chat show rivals from other channels joke for joke.
‘What I have come to terms with The Late Late Show is that it’s not like anything else. It was like other shows once upon a time but it’s not now because everything is comedy-based. And it’s comedian host-based, especially in the States and to a large extent in the UK as well, from Graham Norton to Alan Carr to Jimmy Fallon to Jimmy Kimmel, even Letterman, Leno, all of them are comedians and as you well know, that’s the last thing I am.’
The latest in a steady downward trend