Plunging ratings for ABC’s Q+A raise more questions than answers

What’s up with Q+A? Officially, nothing; the ABC professes it is perfectly happy with the show’s performance. But unofficially, the numbers must be truly worrying for what is meant to be a flagship program.

Last week just 173,000 metro viewers tuned in, a record-low audience for the 14-year-old program. This week a new unwanted record was set as just 168,000 people in the five mainland capitals watched.

Recent Q+A episode Cancel Culture and Branding Balls-Ups had Virginia Trioli host cultural icon Roxane Gay and a panel of thinkers to discuss cancel culture, bad branding and racial injustice.Credit:

(Last week’s number rises to 296,000 once regional, time-shifted and iview audiences in the seven days after broadcast are factored in. Thursday’s episode was watched by 265,000 people including regional viewers, a number that will likely rise by around 10 per cent over the next seven days.)

Is this just a blip, a variation in audience within the normal ups and downs to be expected over the course of a year? Or is it a sign of a show in terminal decline?

Certainly the cultural warriors of the right would have us believe it’s the latter. Too woke, irrelevant, boring, they chorus in whatever online forum they can find, endlessly spamming channels with their complaints that “it’s not my ABC” and calls to defund or privatise it. For them, Q+A isn’t just a program, it’s a symptom of all that is wrong with the public broadcaster, and proof that it has outlived its usefulness.

To some degree, their views can be discounted because nothing the ABC does short of adopting the political and philosophical worldview of SAD (Sky News after dark) is likely to satisfy them. But to the extent that the ABC is meant to service all Australians, the dwindling audience for a show that is meant to represent the voice of all Australians is problematic.

In the face of the declining audience and relentless criticism, the ABC insists the show is doing just fine.

“Each week on average more than half a million people watch Q+A, an unscripted, thought-provoking hour of topical discussion and debate,” a spokesperson for the broadcaster said in a statement on Friday.

“In 2022 to date Q+A has achieved a total average audience of 518,000 viewers across metro and regional broadcast markets and ABC iview.”

The audience on iview grew by 70 per cent last year, the ABC claims. On YouTube, this year’s six episodes to date have had more than 100,000 views, while archived episodes racked up more than 4 million. The program’s share of the broadcast market is 8 per cent in metro markets and 7.5 per cent in regional, “similar to the Thursday 8.30pm timeslot in 2020 and 2021″.

In other words, nothing to see here. Move along.

Except that is increasingly what people are doing – deciding there’s nothing to see here and moving along.

One senior ABC TV executive, who was not authorised to speak on the record, said there was no chance the program would be axed or moved in the foreseeable future, and certainly not this year. “It’s not like a commercial network where if it’s not working it will just get pulled,” they said. “It’s a relatively cheap program to make, it fulfils its brief and with Foreign Correspondent at 8pm that’s starting to become a decent current affairs line-up where it used to be a bit of a wasteland.”

ABC Management knew Thursday nights would be a tougher ask than the old Monday timeslot, where the show closed a solid block that also included 7.30, Australian Story, 4 Corners and Media Watch. But the rise of streaming as the preferred viewing choice in later evening meant an early slot later in the week looked a better way to future-proof the show than did staying with a slot whose starting time could sometimes be bumped to 9.40pm, with final credits edging towards 11pm.

Please leave: The moment Stan Grant ordered an audience member to leave the set two weeks ago.Credit:

To be fair, the numbers do bounce around. The total 7-day audience this year has been 412,000 in week one, 346,000 in week two, and 384,000 in week three. Week four, when Stan Grant evicted Sasha Gillies-Lekakis from the audience for speaking in favour of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, was watched by 530,000 viewers, gaining a 15 per cent bump on catch-up and iview – about double its usual lift – as people caught up on what all the fuss was about. Unfortunately for Q+A, many of them didn’t come back the following week, when viewers totalled just 296,000 across seven days.

But veteran media analyst Steve Allen says no matter what the ABC’s official line, “they’d be disappointed, no question”.

The program this year is, he thinks, better than it has been over the past couple of years.

“Some of the subjects are challenging, but the panellists are interesting, and more varied this year. I think they’re being much more careful about that.”

Then again, he says, noting the dip of the past couple of weeks, “maybe people liked it being a bit biased”.

Virginia Trioli, one of Q+A’s three-person hosting line-up. Credit:

It’s important to view the numbers in context. Thursday is a tough night, with children’s sports practice, late-night shopping, and the beginning of the weekend social whirl all dragging viewers away. In Sydney and Brisbane, Q+A is up against NRL (463,000 metro and regional viewers for Thursday night’s Storm vs Rabbitohs game), and in Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth it’s up against AFL (473,000 for Carlton’s rousing win over Richmond). Nationally, it’s up against the popular Gogglebox (692,000 metro and regional viewers this Thursday). None of those numbers is especially huge.

This week’s show had some strong elements, including an international guest (Roxane Gay), interstate panellists, a packed studio audience and a musical finale from The Living End’s Chris Cheney. It had host Virginia Trioli hosing down hecklers by declaring, “we’re going to let people talk tonight … I think it’s really important we hear different views you don’t agree with”, which sounded a lot like a riposte to Grant’s action two weeks ago.

It even had Pru Goward taking a self-inflicted hit over a controversial recent column for the Australian Financial Review in which she derisively talked about “proles”. “You can never excuse bad writing,” she said, “and it was bad writing, so there we go.”

The ingredients were all there for a decent show, except one: the viewers.

For now, the ABC’s official line is to excuse bad numbers. But privately, they must be hoping they find an answer, and soon.

Email the author at [e-mail], or follow him on Facebook at karlquinnjournalist and on Twitter @karlkwin

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