The ABC’s Jacob Greber has emerged as the clear favourite to replace Laura Tingle in one of the national broadcaster’s highest profile and most scrutinised positions.

Greber is chief digital political correspondent at the ABC’s Parliament House bureau, and staff expect he will be chosen to replace Tingle on the flagship current affairs program 7.30. He joined the ABC less than a year ago from The Australian Financial Review.

Other prominent figures in the ABC’s Canberra bureau, including bureau chief David Lipson, national affairs editor and Radio National Breakfast correspondent Melissa Clarke, and Insiders host David Speers have been flagged as potential candidates for the 7.30 role.

Outside the capital, Patricia Karvelas and more left-field choices such as ABC Melbourne radio host Raf Epstein were also mentioned.

Karvelas and Epstein ruled themselves out when contacted by this masthead. Greber, Lipson, Clarke and Speers had not responded at the time of publishing. However, none were expected to apply for the job. An ABC spokesperson said the job was being advertised and it would be a competitive process.

The ABC has publicly emphasised its shift away from broadcast TV to digital, but 7.30 remains arguably its most impactful daily program. It is regularly the broadcaster’s most watched on any given night.

The show had an average nightly audience of 904,000 in the week after the election. During that run, it aired the first interview with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese following his party’s landslide win at the polls.

The average nightly audience for 7.30 was 756,000 in the 2023-24 financial year, according to the ABC’s annual report, holding up relatively well in light of ongoing national trends.

In 2018-19, the show’s combined average nightly audience was 831,000 and, in 2021-22, it was 964,000, according to the annual reports. The 2021-22 fiscal year included extended COVID-19 lockdown periods and a federal election.

This year’s federal election night ratings showed most Australians still turn to the ABC over its commercial rivals for broadcast coverage of major political moments.

And because of that reach and importance to so many Australians, the political correspondent position on 7.30 has traditionally been seen as one of the ABC’s most senior reporting jobs.

But with that profile comes added scrutiny, as Tingle experienced during her seven years on the show.

For instance, Tingle found herself in the headlines over her comments about the Voice to parliament referendum, and again when she called Australia a “racist country” during a Sydney Writers’ Festival panel in 2024.

Greber, the top candidate for the7.30 role, was hired by the ABC in 2024, with the newly created job title of chief digital political correspondent. In this role, he has all but filled the gap left by the ABC’s last political editor, Andrew Probyn, aside from contributing to the 7pm news.

Probyn was controversially made redundant from his role in mid-2023. Internal documents showed the ABC justifying the decision as a step away from the Parliament House bureau’s “outdated, top-heavy structure still largely focused on linear television broadcast”.

Soon after, the bureau’s editor, Michelle Ainsworth, departed. Clarke and Lipson have occupied the role since, bringing its editor count to five in six years.

Tingle will take up her position as global affairs editor mid-year with the job understood to be a two-year posting.

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