Late Night Live

Late Night Live

Company type	Radio program
Industry	Broadcasting
Founded	1990s
Headquarters	Australia
Area served	Australia
Key people	David Marr (presenter, from 15 July 2024), Phillip Adams (host 1991–2024)
Products	Radio show, podcast
Parent	Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Late Night Live (commonly abbreviated as LNL) is a radio show produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and broadcast on Radio National. The program is also accessible as a podcast. It features in-depth interviews spanning topics such as current affairs, politics, science, philosophy, and cultural issues.

As of 15 July 2024, the show’s presenter is David Marr. Prior to this, from 1991 until July 2024, the program was hosted by the esteemed writer and public intellectual Phillip Adams. Earlier presenters included journalist Richard Ackland and Virginia Bell, who later served as a High Court justice. The program has also welcomed guest hosts like Tracey Holmes, Jonathan Green, Elizabeth Jackson, and Andrew West.

The content centers on serious conversations that cover politics, science, philosophy, and culture, with the goal of delivering innovative public discourse and ideas that are often overlooked by other Australian media outlets.

Broadcast slots run from 10:05 pm to 11 pm Monday through Thursday, with repeat airings at 3:05 pm Tuesday to Friday and an additional repeat starting early 2025 at 4:05 pm. Each January, instead of producing new episodes, the program rebroadcasts selected highlights from the previous year.

In 2011, an online special titled "In Bed With Phillip" was released, featuring a collection of over 200 standout interviews from Adams’ time as host. To commemorate his two decades on air, Adams authored Bedtime Stories: Tales from My 21 Years at RN's Late Night Live, published by HarperCollins, which recounts his choice to join Radio National and shares reflections on his experiences with the show.

Regular contributors

Among the regular voices on the program is Laura Tingle, chief political correspondent for ABC's 7.30, who provides insights into national political developments every Monday evening. On Tuesdays, American journalist Bruce Shapiro, director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, joins Adams to discuss current political affairs in the United States alongside broader international matters. Every other Wednesday, Ian Dunt—editor-at-large at politics.co.uk—contributes analysis of political, cultural, and economic events across Britain, Ireland, and Europe. Monthly contributions come from economist Satyajit Das and Tess Newton Cain of Griffith University, who report on developments within the Asia-Pacific region.

In earlier periods, prominent contributors included Margo Kingston and Beatrix Campbell, who focused on Australian and British political cultures respectively. Christian Kerr—a former staffer for the conservative Liberal Party and commentator known for writing the pseudonymous Hillary Bray column in Crikey—also regularly contributed.

Guests

The program has hosted an array of distinguished thinkers, authors, journalists, and political leaders such as Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, Gerry Adams, Arundhati Roy, David Frum, Isabel Allende, former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, filmmaker Oliver Stone, ex-Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as cultural figures like Christopher Hitchens, Gore Vidal, playwright Arthur Miller, and former Australian prime ministers Malcolm Fraser and Gough Whitlam.

Format

Typically, episodes are divided into three parts, each separated by a short instrumental interlude lasting around 30 seconds, although extended one-hour interviews with guests have become increasingly frequent. Adams describes the program as "the little wireless program."

Adams adopts a relaxed and informal conversational approach rather than a confrontational one. Guests are introduced with their full names, including credentials and significant positions, before Adams switches to addressing them by their first names. When guests hold distinguished academic chairs, Adams often requests a brief explanation of the chair's namesake. The overall tempo is unhurried, yet Adams subtly guides the flow of conversation.

He affectionately refers to his listeners as "Gladys," jokingly suggesting a single audience member, later broadening the term to "Poddies" in reference to podcast and streaming audiences. Other nicknames include "Noddies" for those who doze off during the show, "Maddies" for critics, and "Tweethearts" for followers on Twitter.

Production

The show is produced by a team of four: Adams serves as executive producer, supported by three producers who each manage one night per week. A technical producer oversees the nightly broadcast operations. While Adams may propose topics, the producers are responsible for guest selection and formulating questions, which Adams reviews and either approves or declines.

Audience

By 2020, the program achieved over one million monthly downloads, ranking it as the second most listened-to ABC radio show after Richard Fidler's Conversations. In 2010, the estimated weekly cumulative audience was approximately 350,000 listeners, with 217,463 downloads recorded in August of that year. Of these downloads, 75% were from Australia, 6% from the United States, and 3% from the United Kingdom. The demographic primarily consists of individuals with university education (65%), aged over 40 (90%), including 40% employed in white-collar professions and 45% retired or homemakers. Women make up 55% of the listenership.

Theme music

The current theme music is the first movement from Giuseppe Brescianello's Violin Concerto No. 4 in E minor, Op. 1, performed by the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra.

Prior to March 2016, the theme was "Eliza Aria" from Elena Kats-Chernin's ballet Wild Swans, which had replaced Kats-Chernin's "Russian Rag"—a piece humorously dubbed by Adams as the 'Waltz of the Wombats.' This theme has been presented in various arrangements featuring instruments such as clarinet, trumpet, marimba, harp, strings, flute, oboe, bassoon, horn, and piano.

Before Adams took on hosting duties, the theme was the third movement of Johann Sebastian Bach's Concerto for Two Harpsichords in C minor (BWV 1060).