Money talks: RTÉ considered it unpalatable to pay Ryan Tubridy a higher salary than Pat Kenny's approximate €800,000

Ryan Tubridy's elegant leap from the television wings of Saturday night to centre-stage with The Late Late Show on Friday night is like the butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil. The effects are being felt far and wide.

News of the 35-year-old young fogey's ascension to the top presenter's job hit Montrose like a hurricane last week. All the expectation had been that Miriam O'Callaghan's name was already on the back of the chair. She is a proven chat show host, charming and beautiful, and would have added novelty as the first woman presenter of The Late Late. Her husband, the station's newly-appointed head of home-produced programmes, Steve Carson, absented himself from the decision-making process, led by his boss Noel Curran.

There had been rumours around the village that is RTÉ that a daily radio spot was being tailor made for O'Callaghan to compensate for losing Prime Time, despite her dearth of radio experience and her face for television. Sources say her downfall was research privately conducted for RTÉ showing that male presenters are the safest bet for weekend tv chat shows. RTÉ, it seems, did not have the stomach to test the extent to which such attitudes are formed as a result of years of conditioning.

While the station's stars maintained their equanimity in public, in private they were furious at being let stew during the protracted period of public speculation about who would win the role. They were also perturbed that in their closeted talks with station bosses they were offered no extra money for presenting The Late Late. Having just ploughed through a second round of wage-cutting, RTÉ considered it unpalatable to pay Tubridy a higher salary than Pat Kenny's approximate €800,000. "Besides," says an insider, "when Pat took over from Gaybo 10 years ago he was on a tiny fraction of what Gay was paid. He had to earn his spurs."

With only two Late Late Show editions left, Kenny is preparing for his switch to the Questions & Answers slot with a live audience on Monday nights while his existing production team is mired in limbo. Nobody has told them their fate and uncertainty reigns. Hope persists though that the current team will be kept on, having increased audience numbers year-on-year. About 680,000 people watch the show every week, attracting lucrative advertising revenue. Producer Larry Masterson, who has been with the Late Late for the last three years, declined to comment about his own position but, when asked what he thought of Tubridy's appointment, he said: "He's shown he has the talent. He's very good with celebrities and human interest. Maybe he hasn't the track record yet of doing heavier interviews but that's something that he can do quite easily and he does have the likeability factor, which is huge."

RTÉ does not have the money to immediately replace Tubridy Tonight with a home-produced show and will buy something in to fill that space until next January. There is conjecture that Cillian Fennell, the executive producer on Miriam O'Callaghan's show last summer, could be in line to take over as producer of the Late Late. Fennell, a marine zoologist by qualification, produced the show for three years with Gay Byrne and went on to produce the failed Dunphy Show on TV3. It could go against him that he also produced John Ryan's satirical programme, This is Nightlive, which recently bombed on RTÉ 2.

While plans are being made for a new show on RTÉ 2 similar to Channel 4's 11 O'clock Show for the autumn series, back on RTÉ 1, the axing of Seoige has left another gap to be filled. Gráinne Seoige, one of the also-rans in The Late Late Show race, is being tipped as the new presenter of Come Dancing while the slot she has vacated in the RTÉ daily schedule will be partly filled by an extended Afternoon Show. Front-of-house personnel friction on the latter, combined with a changed audience demographic caused by increased national unemployment (more men are watching television in the afternoon) will necessitate some tweaking of the format. The money is not there to continue putting out two live shows in the afternoon. Independent production companies complain that commissions from the national broadcaster have dwindled and they are being asked to drastically reduce the costs of established shows for next season. "There are 300 companies in Ireland and some of us are very worried about surviving," confirms a source in the sector. "We're getting two weeks' notice from RTÉ about ideas they're interested in. Very little is being commissioned. They're moving into programme sponsorship in a big way and that's putting more pressure on the independents to find sponsors before even pitching ideas."

When Pat Kenny presents his final Late Late Show on 29 May, it will be the end of an era for RTÉ. The station's financial travails (aggravated by the government's demand that it contribute to the cost of digital tv), the changing audience and the rearrangement of presenters' chairs will, according to one source, "mean we'll have a leaner, meaner machine by the autumn – everything is on the table now". Kenny's last outing is being planned as a garden party, inspired by the Bloom festival in Farmleigh. It will be held in the grounds of Montrose, complete with a cast of chickens, pigs and goats. We will have to wait until September to see if Ryan Tubridy, whose self-assuredness stands him in good stead, feels confident enough to eschew WC Fields' dictum "never work with children or animals".