Sky News Australia is an Australian news channel owned by News Corp Australia. Originally launched on 19 February, 1996, it broadcasts rolling news coverage throughout the day, while its prime time lineup is dedicated to opinion-based programs featuring a line-up of conservative commentators.
Sky News Australia is distributed on pay television in Australia and New Zealand, while a free-to-air version of the service, Sky News Regional (which features programming from Sky News Australia and Fox Sports News) is distributed on digital terrestrial television by Paramount Australia & New Zealand and selected WIN Television stations. The channel also operates two spin-off services, Sky News Weather Channel and public affairs service Sky News Extra (formerly A-PAC).
The channel was originally a joint venture between British broadcaster BSkyB (thus making it a spin-off of the Sky News channel in the United Kingdom), Seven Network Limited, and Publishing and Broadcasting Limited (owner of the Nine Network), as Australian News Channel. The company was acquired by News Corp Australia in 2016. With the subsequent sale of Murdoch's remaining shares in Sky UK to Comcast, Sky News Australia no longer has any direct ties to its UK counterpart, but continues to use the Sky News branding under licence from Comcast. In February 2026, it was announced that the channel will rebrand as News24 in late-2026.
Since the acquisition of the channel by News Corp Australia, Sky News Australia has faced scrutiny from the press over its current focus on conservative opinion programming, including comparisons to Rupert Murdoch's American news channel Fox News, and accusations that Sky News Australia commentators have promoted misinformation and conspiracy theories.
Sky News Channel's parent company, Australian News Channel (ANC), was owned equally by British Sky Broadcasting, Seven Network Limited (later Seven Group Holdings then Seven West Media) and Publishing and Broadcasting Limited (later PBL Media then Nine Entertainment), each with a 33% stake in the company from its founding until December 2016, when it was acquired by News Corp Australia.
Sky News Australia launched at 5 pm on 19 February 1996, as the first Australian-produced television news channel. The channel aired its 50,000th unique newscast on 23 April 2003 at 11 am. Sky News was added to Austar on 1 April 2000.
In 2004, Sky News began broadcasting Sky News Active, its on-demand interactive TV news service. In 2008, Sky News launched the Sky News Business Channel, and on 20 January 2009, Sky News launched Australian Public Affairs Channel (A-PAC). It began widescreen broadcasting on 17 May 2009. In 2013, Sky News Australia was granted 20 million in funding from its parent company to be used over three years.
Sky News Australia began broadcasting in high definition on 1 December 2015.
With the sale of Murdoch's remaining shares in Sky UK to Comcast in 2018, Sky News Australia no longer has any direct ownership ties to its UK counterpart, but continued to use the Sky News branding under licence from Comcast.
In February 2018, Sky News Australia launched a digital-first brand and content platform called 2600. The online political newsletter is sent out daily with breaking news from Canberra.
In November 2018, Sky News terminated the contract of former Liberal Party MP and late-night presenter Ross Cameron for using sinophobic language to describe Chinese people.
In mid-2019, the channel began expanding its digital operations. This included a content partnership with YouTube, Microsoft News, Facebook and Taboola. That led to new, opinion-focused videos being uploaded more frequently and across News Corp platforms, after having previously not uploaded any videos from February 2017 to April 2019.
In July 2024, it was reported that the network would relocate to the News Corp Australia headquarters in Surry Hills in 2025.
News Corp's license to the Sky News brand is expected to expire in late 2026, and Sky Limited is not expected to renew the agreement due to the change in ownership and the divergence in editorial direction between Sky News UK (which must provide an impartial service per British broadcasting regulations) and Sky News Australia (which has increasingly broadcast conservative opinion content). It was reported that News Corp were considering rebranding the network as either "Australian News Channel" or a name containing either "Fox News"âÂÂderived from the U.S. sister network owned by Fox Corporation, or "Talk"âÂÂcoming from News UK brand Talkradio, which operates a spin-off internet television service.
On 20 February 2026, during the official opening of their new Surry Hills headquarters to mark the channel's 30th anniversary, Sky News Australia announced that it would rebrand as News24 later in the year. Its new logo incorporates part of the News Corp wordmark, which itself is based on the handwriting of company founder Rupert Murdoch; News Corp described the new name as transitioning Sky News from being an Australia-centric television channel to a "globally ambitious", multi-platform news brand.
Sky News programming consists of a mix of live news bulletins, live broadcasts from events (such as Parliament Question Time and selected press conferences), original commentary panel programs and simulcasts of international sister station Sky News UK. Sky News has broadcast every sitting of Question Time from the House of Representatives since its launch in 1996.
In 2013, ahead of the federal election, Sky News Australia began to pivot its prime time programming to feature live current affairs programming, adding the new programme Paul Murray Live and the weekly Viewpoint with Chris Kenny. It also added a new sportscast presented by James Bracey, and named Stan Grant the new presenter of Newsnight. Following the acquisition of the channel by News Corp, Sky News Australia began to increasingly feature conservative, opinion-based programming during the evening and prime time hours.
On weekdays, throughout most of the day, rolling news coverage is presented from one of Sky News Australia's studios. From 5 pm (AEST/AEDT), commentary programs begin, and continue through primetime until 11 pm AEST/AEDT. Most of these programs are presented by conservative commentators discussing the news of the day, often with a panel of other commentators, and feature a news update at the beginning of the program (and sometimes further updates during the program). Rolling news continues from 11 pm AEST/AEDT before coverage switches to an overnight simulcast of Sky News UK at 1 am AEST/AEDT.
Beginning in 2007, Sky News aired local breakaway programming for New Zealand viewers in primetime, filmed at Prime NZ's Auckland studios and produced from Sydney. One of these programs, Prime News â First at 5:30, was also simulcast to Australian viewers. The debut of Sky News NZ Evening News was watched by just 1,500 viewers and panned by critics. Sky News Australia continued to produce news programming for Prime until 2015, when MediaWorks New Zealand took over production of Prime's news programming via its own news department. On 16 June 2018, Sky News Australia premiered New Zealand Agenda, a political program hosted by New Zealand bureau chief James O'Doherty from Wellington, New Zealand.
Daytime
Nighttime (Sky After Dark)
Sky News Australia has a bureau in every capital city in Australia, completing this with the opening of its Hobart studio in 2013. In 2016, it opened a bureau in Cairns, making it the first non-capital city bureau. In 2017, a Gold Coast bureau was opened marking the third non-capital city studio after Cairns and Geelong.
The base of Sky News Australia is in the Sydney suburb of Macquarie Park, from which the majority of its news and programming is broadcast. Its Melbourne studio was upgraded in 2014, allowing it to be used as a secondary broadcast studio. Hinch Live became the first regular program to be broadcast from Melbourne.
The third major bureau is in Parliament House, Canberra, opened in 2000. Lyndal Curtis became Bureau Chief of in October 2015. Additionally, Sky News has a small office in the Channel Seven building in Martin Place, which includes a small street-level single camera studio which looks onto Elizabeth Street, Sydney.
Internationally, Sky News's only foreign bureau is in Wellington, New Zealand, opened in 2015.
Apart from its own resources, at launch Sky News Australia used the news resources of its former parent companies Seven News, Nine News and Sky News UK, as well as sister networks Sky News UK and Fox News Channel. ABC America and CBS were founding international partners of Sky News Australia.
In 2010 it had agreements with CCTV China, ABC America, CBS, Reuters, APTN, Bloomberg, Dow Jones and Newshub, when it signed a four-year partnership deal with CNN International, commencing on 1 January 2011.
In 2017, Denis Muller, a senior research fellow at the University of Melbourne's Centre for Advancing Journalism, described the channel as having a "split personality", running straight news bulletins and reporting during the day with professional and independent journalists and presenters, while moving toward "right-leaning punditry" (which has been colloquially referred to by the media as "Sky After Dark") in prime time.
In February 2021, Muller, commenting on former Prime Minister and former leader of the Australian Labor Party Kevin Rudd's statement that Sky News was following a pattern laid down by Fox News, described the nighttime programming of Sky News Australia as including "the unconstrained peddling of extreme right-wing propaganda, lies, disinformation, crude distortion of fact, and baseless assertions".
Sky News Australia has an editorial policy that follows a conservative, right-wing bias. Many of the presenters also have openly pro-Israel views. Coverage is frequently critical of Australia's main progressive political parties, Labor and the Greens in addition to the Moderate Faction of Liberal Party, while being supportive of right-wing parties such as the Liberal-National Coalition (except for the Moderate Faction ) and One Nation. Presenter Paul Murray has stated that "Sky News at night is a Liberal echo chamber". Drawing a strong comparison to Fox News, the network began moving towards panel-based programming from 2010, with most of its highest profile prime time commentators being conservative. Hosts Andrew Bolt and Paul Murray have been compared to Fox News presenters Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity respectively.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Murdoch-owned outletsâÂÂincluding Sky News Australia commentatorsâÂÂdubbed Victoria premier Daniel Andrews a "dictator" for his local response. Andrews criticised the network in an interview, stating that "in Victoria, the haters hate and the rest vote Labor and that's fine by me. Call me what you want, what really matters is not that nonsense, that noise, that vitriol, that After Dark bullshit. That's all that it is â the worst of American politics imported into ours."
Andrew Bolt and Alan Jones frequently spread claims about the mental health of then-United States president Joe Biden, claiming he was unfit to be the president and suggesting he was suffering from dementia.
On 13 December 2020, Rowan Dean promoted the Great Reset conspiracy theory on Sky News Australia, claiming that "This Great Reset is as serious and dangerous a threat to our prosperity â to your prosperity and your freedom â as we have faced in decades".
As of February 2021, American far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones uses segments from Sky News Australia to back up his claims.
In July 2021, Alan Jones and Craig Kelly falsely claimed that United Kingdom data proved that getting vaccinated against COVID-19 would increase the likelihood of death due to COVID-19. The claim originated in The Daily Exposé, a British website known for promoting COVID-19 and anti-vaccine misinformation. The Daily Exposé<nowiki/>'s claim was debunked by the BBC, Full Fact and Reuters. Sky News Australia subsequently removed the broadcast and issued a correction on its website.
On 1 August 2021, YouTube barred Sky News Australia from uploading new content onto their channel for a week for breaking YouTube's rules on posting videos containing COVID-19 misinformation. Upon the channel's return to the platform, Sky News Australia published a piece titled "Uncancelled: Sky News Australia Set Free" wherein Digital Editor Jack Houghton claimed the channel's temporary banning was the result of Silicon Valley and left-wing media attempting to stifle free speech.
A 2022 analysis by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a British think tank, found that Sky News Australia was a major source for climate change misinformation. Sky News Australia rejected the findings of the analysis, saying that they would "continue to encourage debate" on climate change. In 2022, Sky News Australia promoted a now retracted journal article from the European Physical Journal that claimed to have found no evidence of climate change in two video segments. The two segments were viewed more than 500 000 times.
The highest rating broadcast on Sky News Australia was an episode of Paul Murray Live on 26 June 2013 (following the 2013 Labor leadership spill), averaging 197,000 viewers across a special two-hour broadcast. The highest audience share Sky News Australia has achieved was during coverage of the 2009 Victorian bushfires.
On 15 December 2014 during the Sydney Lindt café siege, coverage of the unfolding incident took 16 of the 20 most watched programs on the Foxtel platform. The 7 pm (AEST) hour was the highest rated at 109,000 viewers. Sky News achieved a day time share of 2.6% (behind ABC News 24's 3.8%) and a primetime share of 1.5% (behind ABC News 24's 2.5%).
Sky News Live rated 56,000 viewers for early evening coverage of the 2015 Queensland state election, and 83,000 viewers for later coverage, beaten by ABC News 24's coverage which was watched by 195,000 viewers nationally. For its coverage of the failed Liberal leadership spill on 9 February 2015 between 9 am and 10 am, Sky News Live was the second most watched subscription channel and the coverage was the third most watched program of the day with 69,000 viewers.
Sky News Live reached a total audience of 700,000 viewers on 14 September 2015 (including simulcast on Sky News Business) during the 2015 Liberal leadership spill. It was the most watched subscription television channel for the evening and outrated all free-to-air television channels between 11 pm and midnight AEST. The highest rated hour of coverage was from 10pm, achieving 190,000 viewers, the second highest ratings since the 2013 Labor Party spill.
A March 2016 article in The Guardian Australia reported Sky News averages 12,000 national viewers between 6 pm and midnight, with a peak of 18,000 between 8 pm and 10 pm, although the report did not specify what days or dates this average refers to.
During the 2016 federal election, Sky News averaged 96,000 viewers, an increase of 46% from the 2013 election.
In July 2018, Sky News claimed to have achieved its highest ratings on record, with viewership up 9% overall and its weeknight primetime (6pmâÂÂ11pm) viewership 25% higher on the same period last year, according to OzTAM figures.
In August 2018, coverage of the Liberal Party of Australia leadership spill, 2018 saw Sky News gain its highest Tuesday primetime audience ever with a 4.2% audience share. Speers, Credlin and Jones & Co all had their highest-rated episodes on record.
The Sky News 2022 Australian federal election debate had 415,000 viewers.
The Sky News 2025 Australian federal election debate had a viewership of 410,000.
In August 2018, Sky News was heavily criticised for providing a platform to Blair Cottrell, leader of the far-right, Neo-Nazi organisation United Patriots Front in a one-to-one discussion about immigration on The Adam Giles Show. Sky News presenter Laura Jayes and ABC journalist David Speers were among those critical (both on-air and off-air) of his appearance on the programme due to the fact that he has expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler and claimed to have manipulated women "using violence and terror." Sky News commentator and former Labor Party minister Craig Emerson resigned in protest after the interview was broadcast, stating that "My father fought Nazis in WWII and was interred in a German POW camp", and that the decision to give Cottrell a platform on Sky News was "another step in a journey to normalising racism & bigotry in our country". The activist group Sleeping Giants Oz called on advertisers to pull advertising campaigns off Sky News in the wake of the channel's interview with Cottrell.
Several high-profile figures have criticised Sky News, including former prime minister Kevin Rudd, who told a media inquiry in February 2021 that it was following the "template" of Fox News in becoming a "legitimising echo-chamber for this increasingly far-right, extremist worldview". In December 2023, former Victorian premier Daniel Andrews, who was a frequent target of scorn from Sky News pundits during his premiership, referred to the channel's prime time coverage as "bullshit" and "the worst of American politics imported into ours".
Sky News began broadcasting in widescreen, along with its sister channels on 17 May 2009. Sky News Australia only provides closed captioning between 4 pm and 5 pm (AEST/AEDT) each day.
Sky News began broadcasting in high definition on 1 December 2015.
The popularity of Sky News Australia's YouTube channel has grown rapidly compared with other news outlets. At one point it ranked among the top 10 most-watched news channels in the world on YouTube, surpassing the BBC and Sky News UK in total video views. This growth has been driven by opinion-led segments that attract international audiences, especially in the United States.
On more than one occasion, Sky News Australia has had its social media accounts temporarily restricted or suspended for breaching platform rules on misinformation. For example, YouTube once suspended the network's account for a week over alleged COVID-19 misinformation.
With the roll-out of Foxtel Digital, Sky News Australia launched the Sky News Active interactive news service based on the Sky News UK service with the same name. The service offered a choice of eight news screens, some with original content not seen on the main channel they vary depending on the days news or events and include the latest news, business, sport, showbiz and weather in text. Other features included interactive polling and the latest news headlines via text. On 15 November 2009 Sky News active re-launched with a new look as well as 5 additional local screens (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide.
Sky News Now was a mobile service available on Vodafone, Telstra and 3. It offered a wide variety of news in both video and text. As of 2015, the service was no longer available.
Sky News Alerts is a SMS and MMS breaking news service available on all mobile phones inside Australia. Breaking news alerts are sent to a subscriber via SMS or MMS at a cost per message.
In November 2014, Sky News Australia was contracted to provide Qantas with in-flight news bulletins replacing a longstanding contract with the Nine Network.
In Australia, since June 2023, Sky News partners with Nova Entertainment to offer an audio simulcast of its television channel via the free Nova Player app (nationally) and DAB+ digital radio (Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane only). Various programs podcasts including First Business, Market Day, Showbiz, Agenda, Australian News Week, Credlin and The Rita Panahi Show are also available on the app. Previously, it was on IHeartRadio from March 2020 until June 2023, as part of a deal with ARN.
Sky News Regional is a free-to-air version of Sky News Australia, which was launched on 2 September 2018 as Sky News on WIN. The channel features Sky News Australia and Fox Sports News programming, as well as the morning newscast Sky News Breakfast commissioned for this channel that also airs on Sky News Weather. The channel was originally established as part of a partnership with WIN Television. In 2021, WIN's contracts with both Network 10 and Sky News expired; with WIN returning to its previous Nine Network affiliation on 1 July 2021, and Sky News's contract expiring on 1 August 2021 (the allotments were, in turn, used for 9Life). Sky News reached a new agreement with Southern Cross Austereo to distribute the channel on their now Network 10-affiliated stations, now known as Sky News Regional.
In its first two weeks on the air, the channel averaged 10,000 viewers in primetime and 4,000 viewers in daytime, with Richo the highest rated program at 24,000 viewers.
The channel is available on digital channel 56 across Southern Cross Austereo's regional markets in Regional QLD, Southern NSW & ACT and Regional VIC, and on WIN digital channel 53 in Northern NSW and the Gold Coast. It is not available in Broken Hill/Spencer Gulf, Tasmania, Mildura, Darwin, Remote & Central Australia and Regional WA. WIN-owned stations in Mildura, Tasmania, and Regional Western Australia previously broadcast the channel until August 2021 when it switched to 9Life's feed. The channel was previously on WIN digital channels 83 and 85, prior to the rebrand as Sky News Regional on 1 August 2021.
Sky News Regional ended its broadcast on channel 53 in Griffith and South-East South Australia/Riverland on 30 June 2024 after an unsuccessful renewal of the affiliation agreement with WIN.
In July 2025, Sky News and Network 10 signed an agreement to continue airing Sky News Regional, following 10's acquisition of its affiliated stations in regional Queensland, Southern New South Wales, regional Victoria (formerly owned by Southern Cross Austereo) and Northern New South Wales (formerly owned by WIN Television).
In April 2016, Sky News Australia announced a temporary spin-off channel known as the Sky News Election Channel. The channel carried extended coverage of the Australian federal election, the United Kingdom referendum on remaining in the European Union, and United States presidential election, including coverage and programming from partners such as Sky News UK, ABC News (United States), CBS News, CNN, C-SPAN, and Fox News, as well as encore showings of Sky News Australia opinion programmes. The channel temporarily replaced A-PAC on Foxtel; A-PAC remained available on Sky News Multiview. It operated from 1 May 2016 to 23 January 2017.
On 28 June 2024, the Sky News Election Channel was revived, focusing upon coverage of the 2024 United Kingdom general election, French legislative election, and United States presidential elections, and the 2025 Australian federal election. The channel once again replaced Sky News Extra on Foxtel.
On 23 March 2023, the network launched a free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channel on Samsung TV Plus and LG TV Live Channels known as Sky News Now; the channel features highlighted content from Sky News, Sky News Weather Channel, and Sky News Extra.