IF YOU’VE EVER fancied yourself as a panellist on Tonight With Vincent Browne, you may just get your wish.
VinB is back on Monday and a change to the show’s format means that members of the the public will be able to rock up to the TV3 studio in Ballymount and go on live.
The plan is that the people will be able to go on the panel with politicians to talk about the issues that affect them.
The change is not a replacement for The People’s Debate with Vincent Browne, which returns next week as well, but is just a way of freshening things up.
“We needed to change it and we thought this was a better idea,” Browne told TheJournal.ie at yesterday’s TV3 autumn launch.
He said they were originally hoping to make the show longer so that people could drive out in the middle of this show and go on, but that’s not happening for now.
“Even when people are sitting at home that they could go, ‘fuck sake’, and get into their cars and come out, but that could only be if we got more time. It’s the sort of thing that will make it much more accessible for ordinary people and not just the ordinary suspects that go on all the these programmes.”
The People’s Debate with Vincent Browne has already gone to 20 constituencies around the country and the show’s producers are planning to reach them all of them before the general election.
Dublin Bay North is the focus this coming Monday in Clontarf Castle.
This latest change to the nightly show is about building on what’s been done with The People’s Debate.
“That’s an important part of what we’re about in the media. That the agenda shouldn’t just be set by a few people who are usually of the same mind,” he says.
“It should be open and there should be a lot of other people who talk and we should give them a platform speak.”
TV3′s director of content Lynda McQuaid joined the station in earlier this year and says she’s fully behind the new idea.
She explains that working within tight budgets shouldn’t stop broadcasters from trying new things, the station’s referendum coverage for example.
“What really excited me, I had literally only just started, was just The George and Vincent in The George.”
“That just felt to me that we were saying, we’re not going to be shackled by the fact that we don’t have those budgets. We’re going to look for devices and modes and means with which we can do our current affairs that works for us.”
“By opening the door and saying, if you’ve got a grievance, an issue that you want to air, what better way to do it than to come out to Ballymount and come on the show.”
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