timeslot and extended to five nights a week, running until 1988, when Willesee's production company, Transmedia, sold the rights to the program to the Nine Network.
During the 2005/2006 holiday period, the Nine Network announced that ACA was to be "rested" for four weeks to enable a major revamp of the production to take place.
Ben Fordham, Karl Stefanovic, Dimity Clancey, Brady Halls, Peter Overton and Eddie McGuire, among others, have also filled in.
Despite its eighteen long years of popularity and ratings success, the local current affairs program was axed, due to a major schedule cleanup for making space for Nine's now-scrapped one-hour current affairs program, This Afternoon, hosted by Andrew Daddo, Katrina Blowers and Mark Ferguson from 4:30pm weekdays starting the following Monday after its final ever broadcast.
[8] The first state based edition since Adelaide in 2002, the Perth program's initial host, former news presenter Sonia Vinci, resigned prior to the show's commencement and was replaced by Louise Momber.
Michael Smyth was a fill-in presenter for Kate Collins Like Today Tonight, the program's former rival on Seven, A Current Affair is often considered by media critics and the public at large to use sensationalist journalism – as depicted in the parody television show Frontline – and to deliberately present advertising as editorial content, as previously exposed on the ABC program Media Watch.
[11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] Stories covered by ACA rotate around community issues i.e. diet fads, miracle cures, welfare cheats, shonky builders, negligent doctors, poorly run businesses and corrupt government officials.
[20] In March 2010 ACA was found to have defamed acclaimed plastic surgeon Peter Anthony Haertsch in allegations aired in a 2008 report about a Gold Coast woman's breast enlargement procedure, and ordered to pay $268,000 damages.
Mizikovsky sued ACA claiming he was defamed by the broadcast and in November 2011 a jury agreed, but found the defamatory meanings were defensible.
[22] On 7 November 2012, a segment was broadcast giving the impression that Asian people were taking over a shopping centre in Castle Hill, New South Wales.
After numerous viewer complaints, the Australian Communications and Media Authority found the segment had breached the Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice in three clauses, including "containing inaccurate factual material", "placing gratuitous emphasis on ethnic origin" and "likely to provoke intense dislike and serious contempt on the grounds of ethnic origin".