The Daily Telegraph claimed in early July that the channel would be delayed due to technical issues at the ABC's new playout facility, MediaHub, in south west Sydney while other outlets reported that the channel was on track to begin in mid-July.

A particular concern has been the pressure placed upon the budget and operations of both the news division of the ABC, as well as the broadcaster as a whole, particularly the shifting of funds from other departments like drama, Indigenous, documentary and children's [16] owing to the decision to launch the channel without additional Government funding, as was the case with the recent launch of the children's channel ABC3 (now named ABC Entertains).

In Senate Estimates hearings in February 2012, the broadcaster confirmed a $2.5 million shortfall in the budget for its news and current affairs division and imposed a 1.5% cut in newsroom budgets, though denies the link to the channel, instead pointing to recent major news events in the past year such as the Christchurch earthquakes and flooding in Queensland and Victoria.

[17] However, Independent Senator Nick Xenophon has blamed the reported $20 million annual cost of the network for cutbacks in ABC TV sports coverage of the SANFL.

[19] The channel's highest primetime viewership share was 9.5% during the 2016 Federal election coverage on 2 July 2016.

[21] These draw upon the ABC's own resources and those of its partner broadcasters, the BBC, SABC, TVNZ, PBS, NHK, and Al Jazeera English.

Specialist and feature programming includes a daily business programme covering the Asia-Pacific region and an international bulletin with Girish Sawlani entitled The World presented from ABC Melbourne Studio.

It is now broadcast every weekday at 1:00pm AEST/AEDT and is hosted by Greg Jennett (Monday – Thursday) and Matthew Doran (Friday).

The ABC News channel stream is available in medium and high bandwidth varieties on the iView site.