The economics of the Late Late Show: The perils of reinventing a €6m cash cow

This, combined with the intangible brand value of the Late Late to RTÉ, makes it very much the concern of incoming director general Kevin Bakhurst, who is inheriting the leadership of the public service broadcaster at a time when its flagship entertainment show is approaching a transition fraught with risk.

Identifying that person is one thing, sealing a deal with them is another. And as close as Patrick Kielty might be to securing the gig now, this was not the succession plan. It is unclear whether RTÉ had ever properly formed one. The hefty 37-week season – a marathon compared to chat-fests such as the BBC’s The Graham Norton Show – has also heightened the sense that the Late Late requires a level of commitment that Tubridy was no longer prepared to give and was unappealing, too, to initial frontrunner Claire Byrne.

There is a range to both estimates because of the complex ways in which television advertising is bought and sold: typically, advertisers buy exposure to a particular category or subcategory of audience, rather than a specific show. “The commerciality of these things is always a little bit difficult to discern,” he says – a situation that can be advantageous to skilled talent agents who enter pay negotiations armed with facts and figures.

But a Covid bump in the Late Late’s audience – the most-watched edition of 2020, presented by stand-in Miriam O’Callaghan, drew 876,000 viewers – was ultimately only a temporary respite from a trend that will worry RTÉ. So, the Late Late might not be quite as shiny a jewel as it was in the past, but under certain lights, it has faded less than other baubles that once glistened from the schedules of linear television almost by default.

With the Late Late delivering an unignorable chunk of RTÉ's group-wide advertising revenue of €110 million – and being less pricey than sport and drama while it’s doing this – the answer is clearly “not yet”. The hefty 37-week season has heightened the sense that the Late Late requires a level of commitment that Ryan Tubridy was no longer prepared to give and was unappealing, too, to initial front-runner Claire Byrne. Photograph: Andres Poveda/RTÉ

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