Today I can report that Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News Australia is set to fill the void left by the recently announced cancellation of two of Australian television’s previously popular public discussion programs.

I can tell the reader of The Bug exclusively that Sky News has already begun rehearsals for a new show to replace the ABC’s now scrapped weekly Q&A public discussion forum.

A Sky News insider told me that the new show to be called A&A will differ from the Q&A format in significant ways.

“Q&A was built around the idea of assembling a live audience of average and generally politically unaligned Australians asking questions on issues that concerned them and having answers provided by a panel of politicians, experts or academics, business and industry representatives, or media commentators who all represented different viewpoints,” the Sky News source said.

“The aim – and we believe it was a very misguided one – was to have a non-partisan structure within which panel members might present their partisan views and opinions, but those views and opinions would be balanced by others on the panel.

“That just doesn’t suit the Murdoch media’s model whatsoever. We’ve already got all the right answers, err … I mean the Right answers, so who needs questions?

“So A&A will do without all that woke, namby-pamby non-partisan baggage by ditching the panel of guests entirely and featuring just one person, namely one of our star ‘after dark’ hosts, Peta Credlin. (main picture)

“Peta will, as usual, rhetorically ask questions of herself – naturally they’ll be loaded questions tearing strips of the Labor Party for any reason at all.

“She’ll then deliver the answers to her own questions in her trademark long, rambling far right-wing style before advising viewers at the end of each answer to wake up to themselves and vote Liberal.”

My Sky News source told me that the Murdoch-controlled network would also put to air a replacement for Network Ten’s cancelled nightly panel commentary show The Project.

“Sky News sees an opening in the market and a chance to capture a lot of young viewers with the disappearance of The Project,” the source said.

“To attract the younger demographic we’re assembling a panel of key Murdoch media Righters such as Paul Kelly, Greg Sheridan, Chris Kenny, Andrew Bolt, and Gerard Henderson.

“As a bit of a tribute to the cancelled Ten show ours will be called The Prolix and we reckon it’s a dead cert to deliver a young audience.

“We’ve had that confirmed by market research using the same polling company Peter Dutton and the Liberal Party used for the May election,” my Sky insider told me.

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