ABC's 2027 TV Slate: Hugh Marks Takes a Big Swing, but Quietly Axes Another News Show

In our coverage of the ABC over the past few months, we have mostly focused on what Hugh Marks has cut since he became Managing Director of the ABC last year. But this week, we got a sense of what he is spending money on with the announcement of the ABC’s 2027 television line-up.

This is the first year where the television slate has been developed completely under Marks’ leadership, with the pipeline clear of new shows developed under his predecessor, and the ABC has wanted to tell a positive story about the amount it’s spending on new programs.

The slate skews heavily towards scripted series, by far the most expensive kind of show to make, with eight scripted dramas and two scripted comedies on the slate – that’s ten scripted shows compared to just seven last year.

The question is, where’s all that money coming from? No doubt some of it is from cuts to the ABC’s own TV making infrastructure, with fewer shows that involve ABC TV’s own staff on the slate and a greater reliance on outside production companies.

The ABC also did not announce the axing of ABC News program The Business at its upfronts event on Wednesday. Instead, Lamestream can report the program was quietly ditched on Friday morning, in an email to staff from Head of News Simon Robinson.