London Irish left Late Late for RTÉ €100k Brexit party
In the week it got an extra €8.6m of public money, cash-strapped broadcaster splurges but…
AT LEAST 40 RTÉ staff were in London this week for The Late Late Show which cost an estimated €100,000 to broadcast.
The show was well-received but was shrouded in controversy when RTÉ was forced to turn away hundreds of people who had tickets, because they had oversubscribed to ensure there would be no empty seats.
The travelling contingent from Montrose included director general Dee Forbes, head of current affairs and news Jon Williams, the show’s house band and three publicists, though no press were admitted to the event.
It comes in the week that the cash-strapped national broadcaster was given just under €9m
€25,000 a day venue hire, Michelin restaurant chef
extra in the budget – having recently had to dispose of lands at its Dublin 4 campus for over €100m to fund reforms at the station.
A party at the Central Hall, Westminster preceded the broadcast of the flagship show.
Several roads in central London had to be blocked off to facilitate the show, RTÉ confirmed to the Irish Mail on Sunday.
Hire of the venue costs up to €25,000 per day and the hall was hired for a minimum of two days. A chef from a Michelin-starred restaurant led the team which catered Forbes’s preshow party.
The reception was attended by Adrian O’Neill, the Irish ambassador to Britain, and guests on the show including Graham Norton, Brendan O’Carroll, former spin doctor Alastair Campbell and former Ireland manager Mick McCarthy. Controversial guest Nigel Farage was also invited.
RTÉ declined to reveal the full guest list and said the reception was ‘for guests, RTÉ commercial clients and representatives of the London Irish community. Final attendees will not be known until after the event,’ said an RTÉ spokesman. He declined to comment on reports that eight RTÉ staff were involved in organising the party.
However the station did confirm that almost all of The Late Late Show’s staff of 33 had travelled to the event. Staff from Ryan Tubridy’s radio programme were also in London as it broadcast from there on Thursday and Friday to facilitate The Late Late Show.
The staff were put up in London hotels for two nights, and some for three. Technicians and floor operators made the journey by ferry on trucks carrying The Late Late Show sets and technical equipment.
The station said total costs would be ‘finalised after the show’ but a Montrose source put the cost at ‘at least €100,000’.
‘That’s the absolute bottom line,’ he said. ‘The show has a big production budget anyway, it’s more than two and half hours of live television but this is obviously an additional cost to having the show at Montrose.’
The source said RTÉ may have raised its advertising rates for the night to try and recoup some of the big outlay, but the station did not confirm this.
Staff at Montrose were told the show was part of the station’s response to Brexit. ‘It’s all anyone has talked about in here this week, the party in London and who’s going,’ said one staffer.
‘They’re pushing a big Brexit line, saying we’re doing this because of Brexit but it’s not like we’re the Government.’
Speaking to an RTÉ publicist about the decision to bring the talkshow to London, Tubridy confirmed Brexit was one of the reasons they were doing the show. ‘We think ultimately that Brexit is problematic and we think Brexit is economically a bad place to be, however there are enormously important ties that bind our country with the UK down through the years,’ he said.
‘The point we’re trying to make is that, right, Brexit is a problem, right. Economically we’re distanced, but we’ve never been closer culturally.’
James Corden’s Late Late Show on US channel CBS was also broadcast from the Central Hall, Westminster, earlier this year.
An audience of 1,200 was in the hall for Friday night’s show. RTÉ said a ‘lack of space’, in the 2,500 seater hall, meant journalists could not attend.
It turned out that there were a lot
‘We have to oversubscribe to cover no-shows’
more people who wanted to attend, but were left out in the cold due to a ticket blunder. Hundreds of people were left to stand for hours outside the venue, despite holding tickets.
Patricia Lydon and her 71-year-old mother, who emigrated to London from Achill Island when she was 18, queued, with nowhere to sit or rest, and did not get in.
Mathew First, audience manager with ticket agent Applause Store, said: ‘We have to oversubscribe our tickets to cover any no-shows as all of them are free of charge and, sadly, not everyone uses them.
‘We have, however, experienced a higher than normal turn-up rate which has meant that, regrettably, we could not accommodate everyone with a seat in the venue. The demand for Late Late Show tickets is unprecedented.’
Meanwhile on Thursday night, Rupert Murdoch-owned News UK hosted an evening with Dee Forbes at the company’s glistening new headquarters. Ms Forbes previously worked in London as president of the Discovery Channel in northern Europe. Described as a ‘media networking event’ by Aideen Lee of the London Irish Media network, the event was open to the public but no reporting was allowed.
‘This is so people can speak and network in confidence,’ she said.
RTÉ said the event had nothing to do with Rupert Murdoch.
‘London Irish in the Media is an informal networking group, loosely defined to take in journalists, broadcasters, PR and PA professionals [inhouse and agency], Westminster think tanks and creative media proud to be affiliated with the Embassy of Ireland,’ said a spokesman.
RTÉ said all staff who travelled to London were needed to put on the show. ‘A small number of core team members travelled over on Wednesday night to lay the groundwork for the mammoth task of broadcasting
‘Roads had to be closed off to facilitate show’
live from a central location in London,’ said a spokesman.
‘This included managing traffic plans as roads had to be closed off in the area to facilitate the broadcast. The majority of… the production team travelled on Thursday, with the set building taking place overnight. The remaining members of the team arrived on Friday.’
The spokesman said Dee Forbes spent two nights in London this week and ‘Jon Williams had previously planned to be in London at this time in a personal capacity’.
Back in Montrose, Friday night’s extravaganza was met with grumbles by some staff. ‘I have to justify taking a €12 taxi from Donnybrook to town and then we have to watch this,’ said one newsroom journalist.
There was also a backlash to the event on social media, particularly over the guest line-up. One tweet read: ‘The #Latelateshow @RTELateLateShow goes to London and has the same old guests they have interviewed every other week in Dublin, could they not contact any of the hundreds of young Irish making their way in the arts and other fields. #lazy’
Earlier in the week, Ms Forbes told RTÉ staff she was pleased with the Government’s allocation of an extra €8.6m for RTÉ in the budget.
The broadcaster will now pitch for the rest of the €30m the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland recommended last week it should receive ‘immediately’.
However Virgin Media, new owners of the former TV3 said: ‘We note the additional funding of €8.6m secured by RTÉ in Budget 2019. We believe RTÉ should be held accountable for losing €30m in the last three years despite revenues of over €1bn in this period.
‘Additional funding without any conditions is a reward for RTÉ’s inefficiencies to the detriment of the independent broadcasting sector. We will therefore seek clarification as to how this additional revenue will be spent by RTÉ to ensure it doesn’t further distort the overall television market.’ Asked for a comment on The Late Late show in London, Virgin Media declined.