THE LATE LATE Show might have returned last night, but TV3 bosses don’t seem to be paying much attention to what Ryan Tubridy and Co. are doing.
Nearly 12 years after The Dunphy Show was cancelled, TV3 is in no mood to go back head-to-head with RTÉ on the chat show scene.
“Is it back on Friday?,” says TV3′s director of content Lynda McQuaid when asked if she’ll be watching Ryan’s return. “I think I have plans”.
“To be perfectly honest, my whole things about chat shows is, we have Graham Norton and Jonathan Ross on 3e, they rate hugely well.”
“Even old repeats down the line repeat really well. The problem in Ireland, for me, is we’ve a very small pool and we’re all fishing in for the same guests. So it’s very hard to attract those sort of names.”
McQuaid was speaking at the launch of TV3′s autumn schedule, just a few days after X Factor returned. She says that Irish audiences are under served by Irish versions these large scale entertainment shows but that competing with such international juggernauts is next to impossible.
The former You’re A Star producer says this is why an ‘Ireland’s Got Talent’ type show is probably not worthwhile.
“Britain’s Got Talent is no longer Britain’s Got Talent, they send production teams all over the world. The magician from Vegas, they went out to Vegas to see the act. We’re an island of four million people, we’re never going to have those budgets.”
House Rules
McQuaid says that such shows probably aren’t unique enough either and wouldn’t feel ”typical to TV3″. Instead, she points to the upcoming series House Rules, a show she describes as “The Apprentice on steroids”.
The show is an Australian concept and sees couples competing to renovate each others houses. The winning couple will have their mortgage paid off and the series has been a ratings success in other markets.
Another returning show is the Great Irish Bake Off. These kind of shows are closer to the “big event food” type shows that TV3 are pushing, away from the older type of cookery shows that have a celebrity chef making recipes on camera.
On the flipside though, TV3 wants to sell content abroad and those type of cookery and lifestyle shows are much more transferable.
“We are capable of making content that sells off the island,” McQuaid says, “and what really excites me about Liberty Global coming in is that there’s a possibility and an opportunity where, we might not be making stuff that would really resonate with an Irish audience, but it would resonate in sales.”
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