By NICHOLAS COMINO FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA

Published: 10:32 BST, 10 June 2025 | Updated: 10:54 BST, 10 June 2025

Q+A, one of the ABC’s flagship current affairs and news programs, has been axed after taking a break in May. 

The show was scheduled to return in August, but sources confirmed it won’t be airing again.  

The ABC is set to announce the decision to end the program later this week.   

Q+A has come under fire over the past few years after churning through different hosts following the departure of Tony Jones in 2019.

Q+A had several changes in its hosting lineup including Hamish Macdonald, David Speers, Virginia Trioli, Stan Grant and most recently Patricia Karvelas.

The number of episodes was also cut from 40 to 24 in 2024, and the show shifted from its usual slot of Monday to Thursday night, a move that was eventually reversed by the ABC. 

Rating have also collapsed over the past five years. 

From a peak 600,000 viewers in 2020, the Q+A crashed to a low of just above 200,000 viewers across the five major capital cities in April 2021. 

Patricia Karvelas (pictured) is the current host of the show

Patricia Karvelas (pictured) is the current host of the show 

In August 2023, during the show’s ‘Garma Special’, it received its lowest ratings ever with fewer than 84,000 metro viewers. 

Daily Mail Australia’s Political Editor Peter van Onselen said the program would not be missed if it didn’t return to ABC’s roster in 2024.

In an opinion piece for The Australian, van Onselen said Q&A had received just 203,000 views nationally. 

‘With numbers this woeful coupled with how out of touch with mainstream Australia the program has become, it really needs to be put out of its misery,’ he wrote.

‘There have been enough failed reboots to justify finally axing it.’

Van Onselen said cracks started to appear after Jones stopped hosting after a decade in the role from 2008 to 2019. 

‘It wasn’t all that long ago that the program was vibrant and interesting, with discussions well led by former host Tony Jones,’ he wrote.

‘I remember appearing on it at the time. Ratings regularly hit the one million mark, which precipitated the discussion about changing its time slot.’

The ABC is yet to confirm publicly that the long-running show had been axed

Van Onselen lashed the show for not being informative enough and hosting discussions that were ‘one-sided, uninteresting and rarely funny’.

He claimed it was the ABC’s ‘stubbornness’ that was saving the show from being axed for good but that a replacement would be welcomed.

The ABC was contacted for comment.

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Long running ABC program Q+A to be axed after 17 years following a painful decline in ratings

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