Launches ABC Comedy, a new multiplatform brand.

Spanning aTV channel (replacing ABC2), ABC iview, ABC listen and key social media platforms, the offering is a mix of scripted and non-scripted, long and short form TV shows and podcasts.

Podcasts new to ABC listen include Positions Vacant, in which comedians Ray Badran and Susie Youssef have started a company to develop creative apps (CRapps) and are looking for new employees. The two interview high profile Australians (Ronny Chieng, Hamish Blake, Gen Fricker and others) to find the best candidate for the job. Think ‘Between 2 Ferns’ meets ‘The Office’. 

From Working Dog, Santo, Sam and Ed’s Total Football Season 2 features Santo Cilauro, Sam Pang and Ed Kavalee and the return of their #1 iTunes podcast. This season there are 28 new episodes dissecting the week’s European football news and resuls, continuing all the way through to the 2018 World Cup. Santo, Sam and Ed’s Total Football is a Working Dog production for ABC. 

The Urnbelieveable Ashes Podcast is a weekly Ashes-based comedy show, to run through the 2017-18 Australia v England series, co-hosted by comedians Andy Zaltzman, from England, and Australian Felicity Ward. Each episode will feature discussion of the action so far, Andy and Felicity’s spoof commentary of the highlights and lowlights of the matches, random cricket-related tangents, genuine punditry, and occasional barrages of Andy’s trademark statistics in the style of Andy’s globally successful podcast, The Bugle.

Troll Play features Alice Fraser, Cal Wilson, and Sami Shah using their improv/comedy skills to take apart some of the worst examples from online comments sections, Reddit boards, Twitter and Facebook each week including personal attacks, online rants and conspiracy theories along the lines of logic, grammar, etiquette, and kindness. They’ll provide useful troll strategies, as well as communication techniques for victims, as well as an online ethics approach to try to educate listeners to make a kinder world.