Last year, Q+A hit its lowest point in August, when an episode filmed at the Garma festival recorded a national audience of 116,000, according to ratings agency OzTam. (To be fair, it was up against a Matildas World Cup match.) On average, Q+A pulls about 220,000 metro viewers.
For her part, Murphy, who began her career at Irish broadcaster RTE before moving to Australia in 2006 to work at Fox Sports and then the ABC from 2018, says she doesn’t feel much pressure to make sure Monday’s Experts is a Monday night success.
Tony Armstrong will co-host Monday’s Experts alongside Murphy.Credit: Eddie Jim
“Just getting to work with my mates is going to be really fun,” says Murphy. “I don’t feel pressure, probably because I just know we have a great team together … I know that we can have a really good time, and I really hope that it’s something sports fans will love.”
Whether the show is a success or not – although if it includes Murphy’s dream guests of either Matildas star Mary Fowler or one of tennis’s big three (Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic) it will be pretty good – it’s still a far cry from Murphy’s first on-air job at RTE: covering competitive rock throwing.
“Way back in the day, when I first started in TV, and I was a researcher, and I was behind the scenes, just doing all the jobs that no one wanted to do, they told me I was going to get to do some reporting,” recalls Murphy.
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“And I was so excited. They got me to report on stone throwing. I had to go out on the road – and no disrespect to stone throwers – but I had no idea what I was doing.
“But the winner, the emotion at the end of it, there were tears, and I was almost in tears because I didn’t know what I was doing at the start of the day. So the competitor’s tears, my tears, and I made it through. And I remember thinking, ‘Wow, I went into TV reporting to do rock throwing.’ And you know what? If I can get through that early experience, I can get through anything.”
Monday’s Experts premieres on ABC, Monday, 9.35pm.
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