The average nightly audience for 7.30 was 756,000 in the 2023-24 financial year, according to the ABC’s annual report, holding up relatively well in light of ongoing national trends.
In 2018-19, the show’s combined average nightly audience was 831,000 and, in 2021-22, it was 964,000, according to the annual reports. The 2021-22 fiscal year included extended COVID-19 lockdown periods and a federal election.
The ABC’s Melissa Clarke, a potential 7.30 candidate, interviews Treasurer Jim Chalmers.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
This year’s federal election night ratings showed most Australians still turn to the ABC over its commercial rivals for broadcast coverage of major political moments.
And because of that reach and importance to so many Australians, the political correspondent position on 7.30 has traditionally been seen as one of the ABC’s most senior reporting jobs.
But with that profile comes added scrutiny, as Tingle experienced during her seven years on the show.
David Speers moderated the ABC’s federal election debate.Credit: ABC
For instance, Tingle found herself in the headlines over her comments about the Voice to parliament referendum, and again when she called Australia a “racist country” during a Sydney Writers’ Festival panel in 2024.
Greber, the top candidate for the7.30 role, was hired by the ABC in 2024, with the newly created job title of chief digital political correspondent. In this role, he has all but filled the gap left by the ABC’s last political editor, Andrew Probyn, aside from contributing to the 7pm news.
Probyn was controversially made redundant from his role in mid-2023. Internal documents showed the ABC justifying the decision as a step away from the Parliament House bureau’s “outdated, top-heavy structure still largely focused on linear television broadcast”.
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Soon after, the bureau’s editor, Michelle Ainsworth, departed. Clarke and Lipson have occupied the role since, bringing its editor count to five in six years.
Tingle will take up her position as global affairs editor mid-year with the job understood to be a two-year posting.
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