''Saturday Night Country'' is a weekly Australian country music radio program. It is produced by the

Australian Broadcasting Corporation The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is the national broadcaster of Australia. It is principally funded by direct grants from the Australian Government and is administered by a government-appointed board. The ABC is a publicly-own ...

and broadcast from 10:05 pm (in each local time zone) on Saturday nights. The current host is the country singer Beccy Cole.

History

Felicity Urquhart hosted the show from March 2010 until December 2020. She took over the program from original host John Nutting who had hosted ''Saturday Night Country'' from the

ABC North Queensland ABC North Queensland is an ABC Local Radio station based in Townsville broadcasting to North Queensland. This includes the towns of Bowen, Charters Towers, Ingham and Ayr. The station began broadcasting as 4QN in 1936. It was originally a ...

studios in

Townsville, Queensland Townsville is a city on the north-eastern coast of Queensland, Australia. With a population of 180,820 as of June 2018, it is the largest settlement in North Queensland; it is unofficially considered its capital. Estimated resident population, 30 ...

since its debut in 1993. During a temporary period of absence between 2013 and 2015,

Catherine Britt Catherine Elisabeth Britt (born 31 December 1984) is an Australian country music artist who has had success in both her native Australia and in the United States. She started her career in Newcastle in 1999, she moved to Nashville from 2002 to ...

filled in for Urquhart. Nutting has explained that the program was launched during a period when the ABC was experiencing criticism for being too city-centric. He suggested a two-hour national

country music Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, o ...

program be broadcast from

4QN ABC North Queensland is an ABC Local Radio station based in Townsville broadcasting to North Queensland. This includes the towns of Bowen, Charters Towers, Ingham and Ayr. The station began broadcasting as 4QN in 1936. It was originally a ...

, the regional ABC station in Townsville, as a way to counteract accusations of the ABC focusing too much on capital cities. Nutting described the program's late Saturday night timeslot as a "bit of a dead spot" but the show quickly attracted a large following and was extended to a four-hour program. ''Saturday Night Country'' broadcasts on regional

ABC Local Radio ABC Local Radio is a network of publicly owned radio stations in Australia, operated by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. ABC Local Radio stations broadcast across the continent using terrestrial transmitters and satellites. Its program ...

stations and digital station ABC Country. The program is also streamed on the show's website. Until January 2017, ''Saturday Night Country'' was also broadcast on the ABC's metropolitan AM radio stations in state capital cities, but in late 2016 the ABC decided to replace the AM program in those markets with a Saturday night edition of ''

Nightlife Nightlife is a collective term for entertainment that is available and generally more popular from the late evening into the early hours of the morning. It includes pubs, bars, nightclubs, parties, live music, concerts, cabarets, theatre, ...

''. Saturday Night Country continues to be available to listeners in the major metropolitan markets via ABC Country on DAB digital radio and on the ABC’s online streaming platforms. After 500 shows and more than 2,000 hours of programming, Felicity Urquhart signed off as host of ''Saturday Night Country''. Her last show was on 26 December 2020.

Current host

During January 2021, the ABC announced that Beccy Cole would host the show. Her inaugural appearance as host was on 13 February 2021 and her first feature guest was Adam Harvey. Cole is based in Adelaide and broadcasts from the ABC's Collinswood studios in her home city. The new Cole-hosted show runs for three hours from 10:05 pm on Saturdays. This is a one hour reduction from the previous four-hour show. After the program’s December 2021 - January 2022 summer hiatus, the live program resumed during February 2022 but without Beccy Cole hosting.

Amber Lawrence Amber Louise Lawrence (born 19 April 1978) is an Australian country music singer-songwriter-guitarist. Five of her studio albums have reached the ARIA Albums Chart top 50, ''3'' (2012), ''Superheroes'' (2014), ''Happy Ever After'' (2016 ...

was the program's temporary host until Cole resumed on 30 April 2022.

References

{{reflist Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio programmes Australian radio programs 1990s Australian radio programs 2000s Australian radio programs 2010s Australian radio programs 2020s Australian radio programs