Fran Kelly moves from 2005-21 run on Radio National breakfast to her own ABC TV chat show 'Frankly' in 2022
Fran Kelly's first Frankly show started with two Adelaide-linked guests: Dr Richard "Harry" Harris, an Australian of the Year for his role in the 2018 Thai cave rescue (subject of the Prime Video film Thirteen Lives) and comedian Shaun Micallef, having ended multiple series of his series Mad as Hell.
Fran Kelly moved from one of Australia’s most influential broadcasters, as host of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio National breakfast programme 2005-21, to hosting her own Friday night talk show, Frankly, on ABC television in 2022.
Kelly was a feminist activist from her schooldays at St Dominic’s Priory College in North Adelaide. She went on to complete an arts degree at Adelaide University, majoring in literature and classics. Taking part in a women’s rights march with her mother and sisters in Adelaide in 1975 was a another formative moment in her feminism that took another hue when she led an all-female punk band called Toxic Shock in Melbourne.
After experience with community radio station 3RRR in Melbourne, Kelly moved to Sydney to work on Triple J in 1988. In 1990 she became a reporter for Radio National’s current affairs programs AM and PM. Kelly became Canberra bureau chief, chief political correspondent with AM and PM, political editor for Radio National’s breakfast ABC television’s The 7.30 Report and the ABC's Europe correspondent. In 2005, she returned to Australia to host Radio National Breakfast.
With politics a key focus of RN Breakfast, Kelly had interviewed nine Australian prime ministers, a United States president, a British prime minister and many world leaders.
Kelly was involved with the documentary The Howard Years in 2008, including an interview with former USA president George W. Bush. She appeared as a panellist and host on ABC TV's Insiders.
In 2008, Kelly received a Same Same 25 award, recognising her as one of the country's most influential gay and lesbian Australians. The Sydney Morning Herald magazine listed her as one of the city’s 100 most influential people of 2011 and by Australian electronic magazine Crikey as “one of the most influential media players in the country.”
In 2007 Kelly launched the Australian human rights commission’s “Same-Sex: Same Entitlements” inquiry. She was involved with One Just World's speaker forums, moderating a “Women of the World” forum for WOMADelaide and speaking on the “Stand Up Against Poverty” forum in 2009.
