Why Full Frontal with Samantha Bee has been dumped from Australian TV

Full Frontal with Samantha Bee has been dumped from Australian television.

The American late-night show has been axed from SBS Viceland after five seasons and hasn’t aired Down Under all year, despite season six kicking off in the U.S. in January. 

The neoliberal comedian, 51, tackled Donald Trump‘s presidency on every episode of the series, but critics have questioned her relevancy now that Trump is out of office. 

In a statement to TV Tonight, an SBS spokesperson said: ‘Like other broadcasters and channels, we constantly assess our programming mix to ensure SBS is providing a distinctive offer and new content to all Australians.

‘We love Samantha Bee, and are proud that SBS VICELAND and SBS On Demand could provide a home for Full Frontal fans over five seasons, during which time the show provided an important satirical take on the Trump presidency from one of the all too few women in late night.’

Television critic David Knox, who runs TV Tonight, posed the question: ‘With the end of the Trump presidency, has it lost some relevancy to Australians…?’

Full Frontal was primarily centered around criticism of Donald Trump over the last five seasons.

In 2018, she made global headlines for calling Ivanka Trump a ‘feckless c**t’ during a  monologue.

Despite stirring up controversy, Full Frontal picked up an Emmy award in 2017, the same year that Bee was named one of Time magazine’s most influential people.

Television ratings for American cable news networks have been down since Joe Biden took office in 2017, with many anchors struggling to pull in viewers without the ‘Trump bump’ of the last five years.

According to Deadline, Fox News is down 39% from last year, while CNN dropped a whopping 47%.

Bee is currently working on a Full Frontal gun reform special, which will air in the U.S. on May 12.