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New chat show for ABC Fridays?

Speculation Leigh Sales, Annabel Crabb and Dan Ilic could host a Project-style show on ABC on Fridays.

salleABC has denied it is in advance development on a new Friday night chat show, to replace state-based editions of 7:30.

Fairfax reports a Project-style show featuring Leigh Sales, Annabel Crabb and Dan Ilic is in development under 7.30‘s executive producer Sally Neighbour.

A live audience, a desk, comedy and chat are said to be under consideration, with the format involving politics, interviews, investigative reporting, feature stories and “quirky/funny/human” stories.

Fairfax reports an eight-point agenda for a “workshop” indicates participants were asked to discuss the question: “What can we take from other models, e.g. The Project, The Feed, The Roast, Good News Week, 10.30 show [Lateline] etc?”

An ABC spokeswoman denied that any meetings had occurred, claiming: “This information is not accurate – no ‘planning workshop’ was held. Any speculation on programming decisions is premature.”

Since the axing of Collectors, ABC has had ongoing programming problems in its 8pm Friday timeslot, meaning a new format could even run for an hour to address two problems.

One producer of a state-based 7:30 edition told Fairfax, “They’ve not played fair with us. They’ve gone very sneakily behind our backs to construct the alternative to us without involving us in any way. I feel comparatively little loyalty to them. I do to the audience, and to the notion of public broadcasting, but not to them.”

ABC recently aired the Friday Night Crack-Up to much success.

17 Responses

  1. Secret Squirrel – I thought TV tonight reported Quentin was on a salary over 300K? My mistake … I thought the ABC paid just over 100K for an episode of Australian Story?

  2. @Derek – I’d like to see you try to make a weekly half hour of TV (anything) for $100k pa. And, no, attaching a GoPro camera to a dog doesn’t count.

  3. Sales is the reason I stopped watching 730 … Bring back Tony Jones’ misses she was the best host since Kerry

    Dan illic is a comedy writer… Not a host

    Annabel is great as a guest but dull

    The project is woeful … Wy can’t the abc come up with an original idea?

    Quentins salary could,pay for 3x weekly studio shows … Everyone is replaceable

  4. The ABC are losing the plot in trying to be a poor imitation of a commerial network.
    Bring back local 30 mins of state/territory based current affairs please 7.30pm Mon to Fri instead, and leave the national politics to Lateline instead.

  5. The Drum, with all the intelligent bits removed presumably.

    State based current affairs is part of their duties as a public broadcaster and meets their charter. They have already been reduced from 5 to 1 night a week. Now they want to ditch it for a The Project copy and deflect the blame from themselves to the Government’s budget cuts.

    Of course it does save them from paying Quentin Dempster $300k p.a. (and well as some others) to host 30 minutes of content a week.

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