RTÉ spends €155,000 on wining and dining TV show audiences

RTÉ spent more than €150,000 on wining and dining audiences during the last television season.

The hospitality costs were highest for Gay Byrne’s Class Reunion series, as he brought his audience to the five-star Radisson SAS hotel in Dublin before each show.

The cost of refreshments, at €2,400 per programme, was far higher than for Pat Kenny’s Late Late Show, which provided in-house catering for its audience at a cost of €1,431 per show.

According to figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Tubridy Tonight’s producers spent just €957 on the audience for each programme.

RTÉ said the €154,910 spent on hospitality between September 2004 and 2005 was not excessive.

Head of public affairs policy Peter Feeney said: “It’s just like hiring cameras and hiring lights and hiring sound equipment. It’s part of the cost of making programmes.”

He said most of the hospitality budget was spent on tea, coffee, wine and sandwiches. “For a lot of people, coming out to RTÉ to see a show being made is an experience,” he said. “We want them to go away and feel that they enjoyed it and that it was worth it and that they have a good feeling about RTÉ.”

Hospitality is viewed as an essential tool for getting audiences into the mood for entertainment programmes.

But Mr Feeney said RTÉ, which had a budget of €342 million last year, was careful with the amount of alcohol it provided to guests.

“We wouldn’t want people to drink too much because they could become obstreperous or just ridiculous, like laughing at the wrong time,” he said.

The figures reveal the producers of Saturday Night with Miriam O’Callaghan spent €388 on hospitality for each of its six shows. However, the show’s audience of 120 people was far smaller than the average Late Late Show audience of 202.

Winning Streak has an annual budget of €82,000 for hospitality. However, half of these costs are paid by the National Lottery.

The RTÉ figures show GAA fans would be better advised to get audience tickets for the Up for the Final football show, which spent €3,302 on hospitality last year, rather than the Up for the Final hurling show which spent just €2,102.

The New Year Count Down programme had the highest hospitality budget (€3,203) for an individual show.

The RTÉ figures do not include the hospitality budgets for independently commissioned programmes.