Tubridy Tonight

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Tubridy Tonight is a television chat show broadcast in Ireland on RTÉ One. The show is hosted by Ryan Tubridy and is broadcast live on Saturday nights after the RTÉ main evening news. The show began broadcasting on October 16, 2004 for a ten-week run and was extended by a further thirteen shows until April 2005. A second series of the show ran from October 2005 to May 2006.

Tubridy Tonight is the first chat show that has proved successful in the Saturday night slot since the ending of Kenny Live in 1999. The show has an American-style feel about it with a house band, The Camembert Quartet, providing the opening music. Similarl to American chat shows Tubridy Tonight has no opening titles. The show follows a very simple format. There are usually three interviewees as well as a musical guest. The host, Ryan Tubridy, also conducts a quiz with a member of the studio audience. The quiz takes the form of three questions where the participant can either win a prize for himself or herself, or can win the same prize for the entire audience of 200. In the first series there was also a caption competition for the viewers at home. Currently the viewer competition consists of a live call to a viewer at the end of the show, the viewer is given a chance to win a prize if he or she can guess which way the audience voted on a given subject.

Tubridy Tonight and its host have won praise from the former host of The Late Late Show, Gay Byrne. While the show has been criticised by some for being overly American, Byrne has compared Tubridy to the hugely successful American talk show host, Conan O'Brien. The show has on occasions had better ratings than The Late Late Show. The show competes for guests with The Late Late Show and politicians[1] , including Bertie Aherne and Michael McDowell, occasionaly opt to be interviewed by Tubridy, instead of the more probing [2] style of Pat Kenny's Late Late Show. The competition between the two chat shows is analogous to similar competition in a previous decade between Gay Byrne and Pat Kenny. Tubridy's career is similar to that of Kenny and he has been speculated as a possible successor to Pat Kenny, as host of The Late Late Show.

Radio Telefís Éireann original programmes
Comedy & Drama shows: The Blizzard of Odd | Bull Island | Hall's Pictorial Weekly | The Irish R.M. | The Panel | The Podge and Rodge Show | A Scare at Bedtime | Strumpet City
News & Current Affairs: Discovery | Nine O'Clock News | One O'Clock News | Prime Time | Questions and Answers | Reeling In The Years | 7 Days | Six One News
Chat shows: Kenny Live | The Late Late Show | The Live Mike | Tubridy Tonight
Soap operas: Bracken | Fair City | Glenroe | The Riordans | Tolka Row
Talent Contests: Celebrity Jigs 'n' Reels | Charity You're A Star | You're A Star
Irish language: Buntús Cainte | Trom agus Éadrom
Children's: Bosco | The Den | Wanderly Wagon
See also: List of programmes broadcast by RTÉ