17 hours ago
With Upfront the latest axing, how worried should we be about the future of evening news shows?
THE DECISION TO cancel RTÉ's Upfront with Katie Hannon has been met with genuine shock with those who've worked on the show for the past number of years.
The audience-led current affairs programme has been running since January 2023 when it effectively took the slot previously played host to Claire Byrne Live.
An interim
eight-part series Monday Night Live
plugged the three-month gap between the two permanent shows but Upfront with Katie Hannon has been there since.
This week, an RTÉ spokesperson
confirmed the show would not be continuing
, a decision it said was taken 'due to the prioritising of people and financial resources'.
Interestingly, the statement also hinted that there would not be a like-for-like replacement this time, with RTÉ saying it was looking to 'meet the needs of younger, underserved and underrepresented audiences'.
RTÉ also provided a statement from Hannon, with the presenter outlining that she was 'disappointed' that the show would not be continuing and referenced that the show had actually grown its audience from the previous series, a fact acknowledged by RTÉ itself.
This is what has surprised people, with those who put the show together feeling that the audience growth might have saved it from the chopping block as the broadcaster seeks to cut costs.
Hannon will continue in various roles within RTÉ, including the
Behind the Story podcast
which she co-hosts with fellow journalists David McCullagh and Fran McNulty.
The podcast addressed the axing of Upfront this week, with McNulty saying 'it was a surprise to us' and Hannon suggesting there were 'a few words' beyond disappointed she could use but that she would restrain herself.
Hannon praised the 'brilliant team' behind the show and noted that it was a 'fairly challenging slot' in which they nonetheless managed to grow the audience.
'Everyone knows the way linear television is going, we had a fairly challenging slot, we didn't come on air until 10.35pm, but people were staying up to watch us and our audiences, our viewership figures, were on the up. Which, as I say, is completely against what's happening elsewhere in linear television.
'Our social media reach was flying as well,' Hannon added. 'So we were delighted with ourselves, but it wasn't to be.'
Giving a touch more detail than what RTÉ had said publicly about financial resources, Hannon said the crew had essentially been told that the broadcaster can't provide the same output with less money.
'What we were told basically is that RTÉ news and Current Affairs can't continue to broadcast the same output with less people and less resources and that unfortunately is where we landed.' she said.
Hannon added that suggestions in the media that she is being lined up for Liveline are 'beyond my pay grade'.
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'It was made clear to me that this has absolutely nothing to do with any other decisions that are going to be taken about programmes, and who might present them elsewhere,' she said.
Nightly news shows
Even aside from the internal machinations of RTÉ, the axing Upfront comes on the back of similar cutbacks to evening news output both in Ireland and abroad.
Virgin Media Television last year halved its weekly output of The Tonight Show, leading to the
departures of hosts Claire Brock and Ciara Doherty
.
In the UK, the BBC's flagship Newsnight programme saw its running time cut in late 2023, changing from 40 minutes to a half hour.
More than half of Newsnight's 60 jobs were axed as part of the move, which also saw the programme lean more on 'interview, debate and discussion' instead of the in-depth reporting which was the hallmark of the show.
Despite the death knell being rung by commentators after that cut, the revamped Newsnight has proven to be a success for the BBC, with
audiences rising by about a third compared to 2020
.
TonightVMTV
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In Ireland, The Tonight Show on Virgin Media One now has a permanent new host in the shape of Kieran Cuddihy and has maintained its format and standard despite the reduction in output.
Conor Tiernan, a DCU lecturer and former producer of current affairs programmes, also cites Newsnight as an example of how streamlining output can prove to be effective.
'Newsnight is actually a great example, it was dead in the water two years ago. The BBC pulled a lot of staff, stopped having a lot of correspondents and moved to a simpler format, a presenter talking to guests.
A similar thing happened with Vincent Browne many years ago. When Vincent Browne was launched in 2007 or 2008, there were correspondents, there were long reports, it was all very resource-heavy. And then very quickly it moved to just Vincent Browne with guests, much cheaper. The viewing figures actually went up, because people wanted to see more of Vincent Browne.
Returning to the axing of Upfront, Tiernan said the relentless shift of advertising revenues from linear TV to digital is the 'broader context' but that the specific slot of that programme was clearly a challenge too.
Upfront went out on a Monday night. Monday night is an extremely difficult night to attract an audience. It's a very difficult night to attract guests and it's also difficult because of its position in the news cycle.
'Monday is generally quiet, you're either reviewing something that happened a while ago or previewing something that's about to happen. It's always been a very difficult night, that was a very particular problem for Upfront.'
Tiernan also references the Liveline gig and whether that was a factor in this case but adds that, regardless of that question, it's also just a fact that Prime Time exists in the same space on two nights a week.
With a third current affairs programme like Upfront it's hard to maintain a high quality threshold. These shows are meant to add value through analysis and original journalism, it's just very hard to do that three nights a week.
'That's what happened with The Tonight Show too, it's so difficult to keep it going all week, so they scaled it back to two, hoping that the quality of those two episodes would be higher. By cutting Upfront, it gives more space for Prime Time to be better.'
In its statement confirming the cancellation of Upfront, RTÉ named more than 15 TV programmes across news and current affairs that it produces, adding that details of upcoming programming will be announced as part of the wider season launch in August.
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