To whom it concerns, cost of ‘Late Late’ set revamp was €122k

RTÉ has confirmed the cost of the new Late Late Show set, unveiled earlier this year, is just over €122,000.

Figures released by RTÉ show €409,574 has now been spent on three new sets for the Late Late since 2007.

Ryan Tubridy unveiled the new-look set on January 9, announcing to the audience and viewers: “I hope you like what I’ve done with this place.”

However, we won’t be finding out the cost of Ryan’s new chair, or the new couch for guests, or the cost of other new furniture and props, as RTÉ has deemed such information to be commercially sensitive under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act.

In response to the FOI request, RTÉ confirmed the overall spend was €122,808 on “set build and materials, furniture, props, drapes, LED lighting, signage, carpet, scenic painting, timber flooring, backdrops, interchangeable stages for entertainment items and audience area backdrops”.

However, the €122,808 does not include RTÉ labour costs, such as for design time and dry run.

The new exposed-brick set, designed by RTÉ production designer Marcella Power, features brown leather seats, offbeat paintings and a glass entranceway.

The makeover is accompanied by a different title sequence, but the famous owl still appears as a silhouette.

In its response, the RTÉ FOI unit said the new set “while being versatile, is also cost-efficient”, pointing to the costs of two previous makeovers.

The unit pointed out that the last makeover was in 2009, when Ryan Tubridy took over from Pat Kenny as host, and €112,611 was spent on a new set.

This followed only two years after RTÉ spent €174,155 on a new set in 2007.

The FOI response states that “designing a set is a creative, collaborative process which develops over a number of weeks, therefore, as such, there are no minutes of meetings where the new set was discussed”.

A spokeswoman for RTÉ said: “It had been speculated by media sources that this set cost €250,000 — this speculation was highly inaccurate as previously stated by RTÉ, with the set costing less than half what was conjectured.”

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