Pat Kenny has revealed his plans to return to our screens as soon as possible.
The former Late Late Show host has teased that he has a “number of ideas” for a new show, but has not pitched any yet.
The 75-year-old has presented many programmes since his departure from The Late Late Show in 2013 – including Pat Kenny in the Round for UTV Ireland, and Pat Kenny Tonight for TV3.
However, he has not presented a full TV show since 2021 when the final season of Pat Kenny’s Big Debate on Virgin Media Television aired.
Speaking to the Irish Mirror, he said: “I have a number of ideas but literally I haven’t had a chance to develop because every week there seems to be something else. At the moment it is Gaza but Ukraine is still going on.
“Then you have all the various political stories. It is just nonstop so I haven’t managed to pitch anything to anybody yet. I’m not sure what sort of welcome there would be on the mat if I was pitching to RTÉ,” he added.
The broadcaster is currently presenting his own radio show on Newstalk every weekday morning which garners 20,000 listeners everyday, according to the latest JNLR (Joint National Listenership Research) report.
The radio host commented on the figures and said: “It’s encouraging. You have to take the rough with the smooth. They hopefully will not fall the next time. But it is the nature of the beast.
“The JNLRS are the only measure we have but they are not as accurate as, say TV measurement, where they have a unit in the various houses around the country.”
“We look at our podcast as a measure of how much interest there is in the programme and the podcasts are sky high. They’re absolutely massive.”
“With podcasting, you’re measuring the clicks. You know the absolute number. The JNLRS system is one that asks what you listened to yesterday, so it is kind of inexact and that is a problem, but it is the only way they have of measuring. There is no other way to measure except by survey,” he added.
“But I am greatly encouraged by the numbers anyway because it is a comparison to what went before so no matter how inexact the science is, it is the same science.”
In July of this year, Pat spoke out about the RTÉ payments scandal, defending Ryan Tubridy and his agent Noel Kelly.
The broadcaster, who is also represented by Mr Kelly, spoke out before the pair faced the Oireachtas Media and Public Accounts Committee.
Speaking on his Newstalk show, the 75-year-old praised Ryan’s “hard work, diligence and honesty” as he addressed the ongoing scandal.
Pat told listeners: “Noel Kelly is my agent, wasn’t at the time I was in RTE but only in Newstalk and got exemplary service from Noel, no complaints, him and his team were fantastic, I have to say that.”
“Also Ryan Tubridy started his career as a cub reporter on my radio show and hard work, diligence, honesty – all of those things were his hallmark and I just want to lay that on the line as well.”
The broadcaster, who was away on holiday when the story broke, also hit out at politicians for the way they reacted to the situation.
He said: “I was watching this from afar so I wasn’t caught up in the Liveline calls and the calls to Lunchtime Live here and all that, and what people were saying so I was watching it from afar and there was a word that kept cropping up in my mind and that word was schadenfreude.”
“It’s a German word, doesn’t have a direct translation but what it actually means is ‘the experience of pleasure, joy or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures or humiliation of another’ – and I thought there was schadenfreude in spades going on.
“Mostly from the political side, people who have lost probably €1.5billion building a Children’s Hospital, giving out about the price of flip flops. It’s hard to take.
“There was a very interesting article that I read over the weekend that suggested this is not about them at all, it’s about the people who are asking the questions and the soundbites that they will get to do.
“That really if Noel Kelly and Ryan Tubridy are going in to try and explain things, they may not really get a chance because everybody is looking for their reportable moment online and elsewhere, which will be on their social media within minutes of them delivering the killer question.”
Pat, who parted ways with RTÉ in 2013 after 41 years, went on to explain: “I was on the board of RTE, I wasn’t put there by the staff, I was put there by the Minister of the day.
“And I know the way it used to work – basically the DG and the Chair kind of sort out the agenda for the board, documents are circulated and the board makes very few day-to-day decisions.
“And again, when you look at the nature of the funding of RTE – it was predominantly commercial at one point, in the heyday before the streamers arrived, before social media arrived and stole advertising, not just from broadcast media but from print media…
“It was predominantly commercially driven, with the licence fee paying for news, some sporting events that couldn’t wash their faces, some drama that certainly couldn’t wash its face so you had this mixture of funding, and one source of that funding has been drying up or slowing down certainly the commercial, the licence fee collection has not always been exemplary, so they’re reaching a crisis point as to where do they go from here?”
