A Current Affair (or ACA) is an Australian current affairs program airing weeknights and Saturday nights on the Nine Network. The program is currently hosted by Allison Langdon and Deborah Knight (Saturday).
History
1970s
A Current Affair was first broadcast on 22 November 1971, with Mike Willesee, screening weeknights at 7:00 p.m., and was broadcast for GTV-9. For part of its early run, the comedian and actor Paul Hogan had a comic social commentary segment. Under Willesee, ACA was a Transmedia production for the Nine Network.
When Willesee left Nine in 1974 to move to the rival 0–10 Network (now known as Network 10), journalist Mike Minehan took over presenting ACA. Other hosts included Sue Smith, Kevin Sanders and Michael Schildberger.
The original A Current Affair was cancelled on 28 April 1978 due to strong competition in the 7:00 p.m. timeslot from Willesee at Seven on Seven Network and Graham Kennedy's Blankety Blanks on the 0–10 Network.
In 1984, Willesee returned to the Nine Network to revive the format in a series titled Willesee, screening Monday to Thursday nights at 9:30. The following year, Willesee moved to the earlier 6:30 p.m. timeslot and extended to five nights a week, running until 1988, when Willesee's production company, Transmedia, sold the rights to the program to the Nine Network.
1988 revival
When Willesee left the presenting role, former 60 Minutes presenter Jana Wendt took over on 18 January 1988 and the show once again became A Current Affair. This was the same week the Seven Network's soap opera Home and Away was introduced, and in Melbourne where Derryn Hinch debuted rival current affairs program Hinch at Seven.
The Seven Network introduced direct competition with Real Life, which later became Today Tonight. Jana Wendt left the program in November 1992, unhappy with an ACA story showing topless women.
In 1993, original ACA host Mike Willesee took over for the whole year. In February 1994, Ray Martin took over. Martin signed off at the end of November 1998.
From 1999 to 2002, Mike Munro hosted. When he left the program in 2002, he returned to This Is Your Life, 60 Minutes, and later National Nine News in Sydney.
After Mike Munro's departure, Ray Martin returned in February 2003, and signed off again at the start of December 2005. During the 2005/2006 holiday period, the Nine Network announced that ACA was to be "rested" for four weeks to enable a major revamp of the production to take place. On 30 January 2006, two weeks after the program's return, ACA was re-launched with new host Tracy Grimshaw. On September 5 2022, Grimshaw announced that she would step down as host in November 2022 after 16 years, with Allison Langdon to host from 2023.
National edition
Weeknights
Leila McKinnon, Deborah Knight and Sylvia Jeffreys are the main fill-in presenter when Langdon is on leave. Ben Fordham, Karl Stefanovic, Dimity Clancey, Brady Halls, Peter Overton and Eddie McGuire, among others, have also filled in.
In January 2022, Tracy Grimshaw scaled back to 4 days a week hosting from Monday to Thursday with Deborah Knight hosting on Friday.
Weekends
In March 2020, a Saturday edition was launched during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, hosted by Deborah Knight. It was made permanent in December 2020.
Reporters
Chris Allen
Simon Bouda
Seb Costello
Sam Cucchiara
Dimity Clancey
Alexis Daish
Tineka Everaardt
Ben Fordham
Lauren Golman
Martin King
Steve Marshall
Leila McKinnon
Dan Nolan
Hannah Sinclair
Georgia Westgarth
State editions
Launching in 1991, QTQ-9 in Brisbane produced a local version of the program, titled Extra. It carried local stories including the lead up to its NRL Grand Finals. Despite its eighteen long years of popularity and ratings success, the local current affairs program was axed, due to a major schedule cleanup for making space for Nine's now-scrapped one-hour current affairs program, This Afternoon, hosted by Andrew Daddo, Katrina Blowers and Mark Ferguson from 4:30pm weekdays starting the following Monday after its final ever broadcast. The decision was part of a push to nationalise lead-in content for the network's struggling news bulletins. The game show Hot Seat was moved to replace Extra at 5.30pm.