Q+A's cancellation is the mercy killing of a show that no longer got us talking

The Age

a day ago

It's often sad when a much-loved show comes to an end, but it's much sadder when a show trickles to termination long after the love has faded away. The ABC's cancellation of Q+A will be viewed by many as the merciful culmination of a long drift into irrelevance, but it would be unfair to let the passing go by without acknowledging that there was a time when it was bold, vital viewing, capable of generating real excitement, discussion and outrage, and of setting the political agenda.
The eye-catching point of difference for Q+A when it began in 2008 was the running of selected tweets on screen while the show was in progress. It was a gimmick, but a stroke of genius for a show looking to create buzz and connect a watching community each week. It brought another dimension to TV-watching as hardcore Q+A -ers fought fiercely each week for the honour of getting on screen.
Fans often commented that the show was 'so much better when no politicians were on'. I never agreed. Episodes without them produced much civil, intelligent discourse, but lacked the fire politicians generated with their presence. Some were loud and opinionated and deliberately put on a show. Others came over all sweet and reasonable. Or they just played the straight party-line bat, repeating the approved talking points. Whatever method they chose provided great grist for the mill: whether the audience was giving a standing ovation or participating in a social media feeding frenzy.
When the program was at its best, it did spark proper, serious conversations. But it also was showbusiness. Everyone remembers John Howard getting a shoe thrown at him in 2010, and that incident provided exactly what people wanted from Q+A: the feeling you were witnessing something unique; that those who weren't watching had missed out. The mostly left-leaning audience loved the chance to reaffirm their loathing of Howard. Those on the right got their jollies decrying such vulgar violence.
One of the show's greatest controversies was when the Abbott government boycotted it after it allowed former terror suspect Zaky Mallah to sit in the audience and ask a question. This set off furious debate over the rights and wrongs of letting Mallah on the show, but that was what Q+A was for – creating a space for people to argue over what was right and wrong.
The show's best moments were always a result of the willingness to take on the risks of live television and the placing of big, combustible personalities in proximity. Some were one-off instances of unpredictable drama, such as when GetUp director Simon Sheikh fainted on air, or the interruption to the broadcast resulting from students staging an in-studio protest against panellist Christopher Pyne. Others were moving moments that became bigger stories, taking on a life of their own after the hour was up, like when Victorian man Duncan Storrar questioned politicians about tax cuts for the rich and the plight of low-income Australians like himself. To some, Storrar became a hero, but he was later targeted by media outlets digging into his past. At other times, the show shone simply by being the ring in which ferocious and sometimes hilarious verbal brawls were staged – between Yassmin Abdel-Magied and Jacqui Lambie, Bob Katter and Josh Thomas, and many others.
Over the years, Q+A lost the ability to spark anger or argument, or get people talking the next day, or set the political agenda that week. One of the reasons was that it stopped aiming for enjoyment. Even on a show with pretensions to political significance, entertainment matters – you can't be significant if nobody's watching. The switch from Monday to Thursday night, later reversed, didn't help. Moving the show to later in the week robbed it of the feeling it was the kickstarter for that week's public debate.
The 2019 loss of original host Tony Jones – whose calm control and flashes of wry bemusement ('I'm going to take that as a comment') endeared him to many but infuriated others who found him smug and either too opinionated or not opinionated enough – was a blow from which the show never recovered. As time passed, the novelty of the tweets wore off, and the panellists' spats started to seem tired and predictable. 'Don't watch the Bad Show' became the social media motto, as the program tried a little too hard to engineer memorable confrontations. Without popular engagement, the claim to be dictating the national conversation rang hollow, and even the attacks on the show's perceived biases or submission to vested interests started to drop off because nobody was paying attention any more.