It may have been a formulaic chat show but, to paraphrase self-styled mortgage campaigner Jerry Beades, it was never a bog-standard one. TV3’s Tonight with Vincent Browne is to lose its host at the end of the month. Can it survive without the sighing septuagenarian at the helm?
“Not in its current format,” according to one former producer. “There is an appetite for a late-night current affairs show with a preview of the newspapers — the healthy audience [figure] is proof of that — but there is nobody else out there with the force of personality to carry a show like that four nights a week. Vincent had the forensic journalism skills but also that broadcasting X factor.”
Noel Whelan, a political commentator and frequent guest on the show, agrees that it will lose some of its unpredictability without Browne as ringmaster. “When people stop me in the street they ask, ‘What’s Vincent Browne really like?’” Whelan said. “People want to know if he’s putting on a performance or if he’s really so passionate.”
Whether it was “haranguing” then tanaiste Joan Burton, telling Beades to “shut up” or goading Siptu’s Jack O’Connor into walking off the show, some of Browne’s righteous outrage may have been contrived but the prospect of another entertaining eruption kept audiences tuning in.
Whelan said the new presenter will have one advantage over the irascible Browne. “Straight away the producer is going to find it easier to open their contacts book and get people on the show, especially senior political figures who may not have gone on with Vincent,” he said.
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“The show has been informative and entertaining — and it has generated some memorable YouTube moments — but it hasn’t been able to break news.”
During Browne’s tenure there were a number of attempts by various producers to tweak the radio-on-the-TV-style format by breaking up the hour-long panel discussion with pre-recorded packages. None worked, partly because they deprived Browne of airtime.
“He can’t really read an autocue, and he meanders a lot but in a way that helped the programme,” one producer said.
In a media age of soundbites, here was a show that would let a dour economist expound upon fiscal space or burning bondholders for several minutes without interruption, apart from the occasional exasperated sigh from Browne. But while there was an appetite for such gloomy fare when the show began in late 2007, in recent years the audience has been in decline. At its height the show regularly attracted up to 160,000 viewers, despite its 11pm starting time. About half that number now tune in, with audience numbers falling during Browne’s recent bouts of illness and summer holidays.
Browne’s regular absences in recent years have allowed some likely successors to try out the presenter’s chair for size. Betty Purcell, a former RTE producer who briefly worked on the TV3 show with Browne, said she would like to see Irish Examiner journalist Mick Clifford, one of the regular stand-ins, take over. “He would provide continuity,” she said.
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“My feeling is that the audience reflects Vincent’s interests — social justice and questioning the establishment. Mick would come to it with a similar view of the world.”
Whelan said he is not convinced the audience necessarily reflects Browne’s pet subjects. “People watched it to see what would happen, who would get roasted, not necessarily because they agreed with Browne’s world view,” he said.
Names linked to the vacancy include Ivan Yates, Pat Kenny, Sarah Carey, Sarah McInerney, Sam Smyth, Ger Colleran, Kevin Myers, Matt Cooper and Tom McGurk.
The bookmakers have installed Yates as second favourite after Clifford. The former Fine Gael minister, like Browne a dominant personality in any broadcast studio, has indicated he is interested. Not that Browne, who once described Yates as a “failed bookie”, is a fan.
“I would have no involvement in who replaces me but the person who sits in for me and rates the best, by far better than Ivan Yates or Tom McGurk, is Mick Clifford,” said Browne last year.