ABC’s flagship political panel show Q+A is in trouble as ratings plummet

The ABC flagship program’s disastrous ratings has seen its viewership fall to the lowest point in the program’s 14-season history.

Hamish Macdonald took over as Q+A host last year.

The ABC’s struggling political chat-fest, Q+A, could be moved to a different timeslot within weeks, following disastrous ratings in the past month that has seen its viewership fall to the lowest point in the program’s 14-season history.

The latest episode of the news and current affairs program on March 25 drew just 237,000, albeit a slight improvement on the previous week’s audience figure of 231,000. That’s less than half the number of viewers the show was drawing in March last year.

The program has been a strong performer for the ABC since its inception in May 2008, regularly winning its Monday night timeslot with former ABC journalist Tony Jones as the regular host.

Hamish Macdonald took over hosting last year and, while he sustained healthy ratings throughout 2020, it seems this year’s decision to move the program away from its entrenched timeslot of 9.30pm Monday, to 8.30pm on Thursday, has been a serious misstep.

ABC director of entertainment and specialist division Michael Carrington previously said Q+A was moved because “we’ve discovered that audiences now look for content elsewhere around 9pm”.

In an era of declining budgets, the ABC wanted to better use its money to try to attract and engage the largest audiences, he said.

According to ratings company OzTAM, in March 2012 Q+A was pulling more than 600,000 viewers an episode, but since the show moved to Thursday nights at the start of the year, ratings have only topped 300,000 on one occasion.

 

A well-placed source at the ABC told The Australian: “Of course, given the numbers, there’s been talk we might have to review the Thursday night timeslot, and we might have to move it soon.”

An ABC spokesman said the national broadcaster did not offer commentary on ratings, and did not respond to specific questions about a possible timeslot change for Q+A.

The show has long attracted intense criticism from conservative figures, including former prime minister Tony Abbott, who in 2015 banned his frontbenchers from appearing on the show.

Mr Abbott issued the ban after a former terrorism suspect was allowed to join a live studio broadcast and question Steve Ciobo, then parliamentary secretary to the minister for foreign affairs.

Liberal senator Jim Molan last appeared on Q+A in February 2020 following the catastrophic bushfires, but said afterwards he would never return.

During the controversial episode, Senator Molan said he wanted to keep an “open mind” about climate change.

“There is no upside for a conservative Liberal to go on the show,” he told The Australian.

“The technique is to ambush by the audience, by fellow guests and the Twitter crawlers.”

Liberal Senator Jim Molan. Picture: AAP

Since the airing of the episode, Senator Molan said he has been asked once to return to the panel but has declined.

“The cynicism towards Q+A is that it’s not contributing towards the greater good of Australia,” he said. “The issue with the ABC is that it’s partisan.”

Federal Labor MP Tanya Plibersek said Q+A still has an important place in the media landscape.

“For more than a decade Q+A has been holding leaders to account and our nation is better for it,” she said. “I’m looking forward to going on the show again soon.”

Former Victorian Liberal Party president Michael Kroger appeared on the show in 2013 but has boycotted it since.

“Q+A lost any legitimacy after it drifted into the world of woke fascism, where panellists seem to endorse murder and violence,” he said. “Q+A best typifies the ABC’s total disengagement with ordinary working Australians.

“It is a torrent of anti-conservative bile starting with the host, the panel, the topic and the tweets insulting Australians with the laughable proposition that the audience is in any way balanced.”

In 2019 an episode featured Egyptian-American journalist Mona Eltahawy who spoke on women taking action against men they believed were rapists. “As a woman I’m asking, how many rapists must we kill until men stop raping us?”

Days after the episode aired, ABC boss David Anderson said: “The ABC acknowledges that the program was provocative in regard to the language used and some of the views presented.”

ABC later pulled the episode from all of its digital platforms and closed the matter.

Q+A took a scheduled break last week but is programmed to return on Thursday.