An "uneasy period" in politics makes it an exciting time to launch what will "probably" be his last big current affairs series on television, Pat Kenny has said ahead of the debut of TV3's Pat Kenny Tonight.
The show, which is co-presented by Colette Fitzpatrick, starts tonight at 9.30pm and marks an attempt by TV3 to ramp up its current affairs coverage and lure the traditional RTÉ viewer to the channel.
“I think we are in a very uneasy period, and therefore it’s a period in which we can make very interesting TV programmes, thought-provoking TV programmes,” Kenny said.
“Domestically, we have an awful lot happening,” he noted, while international “undercurrents” include Brexit, “Mr Trump” and the rise of the far right in Europe. “There are many, many talking points.”
The series marks a reunion for Kenny and Fitzpatrick, who co-presented a leaders' debate on TV3 during the general election campaign. It will be filmed in front of an audience of 150 people at TV3's HD studio in Ballymount, the largest television studio in Ireland.
“People always say the Irish are mad into current affairs and it’s in our DNA, and it is,” Fitzpatrick said.
Changes in how news is consumed favour the “anything could happen” feel of live debate shows, she added.
“By the time people come home they have already got a lot of their news from their phone, so news bulletins are becoming less appointment-to-view. I’m not writing them off, because I still present one. But live studio debates, for a lot of people, are where it’s at.”
The decision not to include Fitzpatrick's name in the title has been criticised as an example of media sexism, which Fitzpatrick said was "nonsense", as Kenny has "almost three decades' experience on me". The Pat Kenny Tonight name is "a marketing thing", Kenny said.
As well as competing for big interviews with thrice-weekly Prime Time, Pat Kenny Tonight will clash in the schedules with RTÉ One's more celebrity-focused, round-table discussion format The Cutting Edge, when the latter returns.
The in-demand Fitzpatrick said she liked the Brendan O’Connor show, and that the two programmes would have only a small overlap in their formats.
Competition is making Irish current affairs broadcasters “raise our game”, she said, identifying an interview with Pat Hickey as “the one we’re all chasing”.
“It is a very small media community and obviously we all try to rate as best we can against each other,” Kenny said. “We hope to hold our head up.”
But he also said he hoped the show would not be judged on ratings alone.
"I used to be obsessed with ratings, because we all were on The Late Late Show. If you're not number one, what went wrong? Was it part one? Was it part two? Was so-and-so boring? And then it turns out there was a match on."
