Sally Sara will host a new look Radio National Breakfast in 2025, and will be joined by a trio of journalists in a bid to revive the show’s ratings and audience.

Announced on the show on Friday morning, the two-time Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year will host the show at a new start time of 5.30am, instead of 6am. She replaces Patricia Karvelas, who is leaving the show after three years.

The show will also draw from other ABC journalists including political correspondent Melissa Clarke, business correspondent Peter Ryan and Luke Siddham Dundon, with a focus on more international news, in what appears to follow BBC Radio 4’s flagship Today program.

“We’ll be covering what’s going on right across the country, and also given the kind of stories that are unfolding internationally as well, obviously, that international news would be hugely important as well,” Sara said on Friday morning.

Karvelas will host Afternoon Briefing on the ABC News channel in 2025, alongside a new politics podcast Politics Now, while continuing to host Q+A.

Radio National and its Breakfast show have fallen in reach and audience share across the past few years.

In this month’s radio ratings survey, Breakfast had a 2 per cent share in Sydney and 2.2 in Melbourne. In the same survey in 2021, its audience share was 4.6 per cent in Sydney and 4.5 per cent in Melbourne.

Breakfast’s total audience in Australia’s two largest cities has halved over that period. In Melbourne, the show’s cumulative audience fell from 147,000 to 62,000, and from 140,000 to 70,000 in Sydney. However, audience declines are not limited to Radio National.

ABC chair Kim Williams has spoken at length about his aspirations for Radio National to recreate the influence and reach of the BBC’s Radio 4.

The ABC has been undertaking a station review of Radio National, including a reassessment of its programming schedule and how to replace its current “think bigger” tagline and mission statement.

Williams has also urged staff to refer to the station as Radio National, rather than “RN”.

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