The Late Late Show’s London special cost RTÉ an estimated €100,000 to broadcast, according to reports.
The show saw at least 40 RTÉ staff travel to London this week, including director general Dee Forbes, head of current affairs and news Jon Williams, and the Late Late house band.
According to the Irish Mail on Sunday, the live London special was celebrated with a party held at the Central Hall, Westminster, which costs up to €25,000 to hire per day.
The party was attended by Adrian O’Neill, the Irish ambassador to Britain, and show guests – including Graham Norton, Brendan O’Carroll, Alastair Campbell and Mick McCarthy.
RTÉ declined to reveal the full guest list, but said the reception was “for guests, RTÉ commercial clients and representatives of the London Irish community.”
However, a spokesman did confirm that almost all of The Late Late Show’s 33 staff travelled to the event, and staff from Ryan Tubridy’s radio programme were also in London as it broadcast from there on Thursday and Friday.
They said, “A small number of core team members travelled over on Wednesday night to lay the groundwork for the mammoth task of broadcasting live from a central location in London.”
“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 station said total costs would be “finalised after the show”, however, a source has told the Irish MoS that the cost would amount to “at least €100,000”.
“That’s the absolute bottom line,” they 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.”
Montrose staff were reportedly told that the show was part of the station’s response to Brexit.
A member of staff said, “It’s all anyone has talked about in here this week, the party in London and who’s going. They’re pushing a big Brexit line, saying we’re doing this because of Brexit but it’s not like we’re the Government.”
The news comes just days after the station was given just under €9 million extra in the budget, after the broadcaster was forced to sell off land for over €100m to fund reforms at the station.
In response to this, TV3’s new owners Virgin Media 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.”
