Tom Ballard Confirms 'Reality Check' Dropped By ABC

Stand-up comedian and former triple j breakfast presenter Tom Ballard has confirmed in an interview with The Music that his popular ABC program Reality Check will not be returning in 2015.

Although a curious exemption from recent ABC upfronts — in which they detailed their programming spread for the year ahead — as well as having apparently never publicly been cancelled, the national broadcaster simply could not fit the program, which ran for eight episodes in 2014, into its schedule for this year.

"There's no more, there's no more," Ballard explained to The Music writer Cyclone recently. "Yeah, I'm sorry! There's nowhere to sort of talk about this publicly and announce to everyone to let people know because – which I might do actually, 'cause … there were lots of people who really loved that show – lots of people who very kindly let me know how much they liked the show.

"Doing that show was super-fun. But, unfortunately, no, the ABC has not found room for it in its 2015 schedule so, yeah, it won't be coming back. But, gee, it was fun. I feel very lucky to have been able to do it. I got to meet Brynne Edelsten, so that's a career highlight. Yeah, it's a shame, but the TV landscape is a crazy, crazy, beast at the moment and I've gotta be lucky that I was able to host anything for any period of time, really."

At the suggestion that perhaps the extensive budget cuts that plagued the broadcaster late last year could be to blame, Ballard laughed: "Yeah, [Tony] Abbott has got blood on his hands! If there's one more horrible thing that Abbott could have done, it is [to have] failed to bring about season two of Reality Check!"