Ryan Tubridy has 16 weeks to save his career

http://www.herald.ie/incoming/embattled-tubridys-got-just-16-weeks-to-save-his-two-jobs-2864318.html

Ryan Tubridy has between now and Christmas to save his career.

His radio listenership has plummeted to a point where the man himself has been forced to admit he's in trouble.

And if it wasn't for the recession stopping a huge chunk of the country going out on a Friday night, the Late Late Show would probably be in a similar position.

So the pull-out by Sinead O'Connor from tomorrow's season opener is the last thing Tubridy needs.

And any bravado about no publicity being bad publicity is, in this case, bull***t.

Tubridy desperately needs to start the new season with a show that will get people talking. Sinead O'Connor chatting about her highly publicised search for a mate might have made for car crash television.

It might have been uncomfortable (for the host as well as the viewers) or felt intrusive or been plain entertaining.


Fluffed

But it would have got people watching -- and talking about the show that in its heyday set the agenda for the Sunday papers.

Last time that happened was for all the wrong reasons.

Tubridy let pop music's former Mr Clean, Ronan Keating, off the hook by avoiding the one question everyone at home was shouting at the telly -- why did you do the dirt on Yvonne?

It was a golden opportunity -- and Tubridy fluffed it.

There was also the interview with Mark Pollock. He fell from a balcony but Tubridy never asked the circumstances of him falling. Was he just embarrassed? Or is it that he couldn't give a hoot about viewer curiosity; that's he above all that?

So he's going back to the Late Late studio tomorrow still smarting from the criticism over the last few seasons.

Back against the wall, he now must also live up to his very public commitment to take his radio show by the scruff of the neck and turn it round.

As if that wasn't enough pressure, RTE bosses have finally shown that they're willing to pass over the 'stars' if they think someone else can do a better job.

The Voice is a long way from the flagship that is the Late Late. But RTE's decision to plump for Kathryn Thomas for the show rather than Grainne Seoige as presenter is significant. The general consensus was that the job was Grainne's -- and in the pre-Noel Curran/Steve Carson management era, pre-recession, more comfortable environment, it might well have been.

Not any more.

The long-cherished tradition of someone having a right to a gig because they've been around longer, or are paid more, or did well in the past, is breaking down.


Obscene

Then there's the issue of how much the RTE stars are paid.

In the heady days, when ad revenue was rolling in, and we got used to paying our politicians and public servants mad money out of the public purse, the station could justify obscene salaries to its stars on the basis that they could be lured away by rivals for bigger salaries.

That justification collapsed round about the time the economy did.

The replacement of Marian Finucane with Claire Byrne for nine weeks this summer should send another shiver along the spines of the big earners.

Byrne did a spectacularly successful job -- making the show her own for those couple of months -- and on a fraction of the salary Finucane is paid.

Most of the big-name broadcasters are on contracts which come up for renegotiation every couple of years.

None of them -- including Tubridy and Finucane -- are going to be able to take for granted that they'll remain in the big money league.

RTE can't afford to devote a prime morning radio slot, five days a week, to a show that's bleeding listeners at a near fatal rate.

In these pressurised days, they're going to find it hard to give Tubs more than a few months more before they're forced to step in.

One way or another, as he tucks into the turkey on Christmas Day, Tubs is going to know whether he has done the job or not. And that's a ferocious amount of pressure.

Is he up to it?