The latest rounds of changes ushered in by new ABC managing director Hugh Marks have reportedly seen the loss of 50 roles, with the public broadcaster this week moving to axe a digital content and innovation team in addition to its flagship live talk show Q+A.

As reported by the AFR, the cuts include 40 redundancies, with a further 10 staff told their contracts would be ending early as the ABC steps back from areas that "no longer align with our priorities" per Marks.

"We want to be bold with our content ambitions and seek to over-achieve creatively. We have to keep investing and seeking to offer more to our audiences. And we need the capacity to trial new formats for news, screen and audio," he said in an email sent to ABC staff, and seen by Mi3.

The cuts comes amid a suite of structural changes that will see the ABC's content division rebadged to ABC Screen, with audio teams to be split across sport and capital city network. Those remaining from the axed digital content and innovation team will be moved into other tam producing content, in a shift intended to free up budgets to spend on news documentary programming.

"Overall, these changes will create savings to be reinvested directly into more content and services for audiences. The objective is to enhance our TV slate in volume and ambition, increase our capacity to commission more high value journalism, enable more original podcasting and put targeted resources into our metropolitan audio teams," said Marks.

The changes are unlikely to be the last, with the ABC board set to meet next week for several days of strategy and planning meetings.

Industry union the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA) has hit out at the public broadcaster for cuts and mismanagement it said was undermining the ABC's mandate.

"The ABC is one of Australia's most important institutions. It needs to be well funded and accessible to all Australians," said MEAA CEO Erin Madeley. "Management is driving instability through a flawed commercial model which simply doesn't fit with the public interest test.

"Staff are being told they may lose their jobs because they don't live and work in Sydney, where the majority of ABC's staff are already based.

"Decreasing the voice of Australians who live outside of Sydney, and moving staff around like chess pieces is doing a disservice to the public."

Madeley said MEAA would continue to campaign for a fully funded ABC, but also for the quality jobs that quality journalism demands.

"Mismanagement of the ABC and its budget has led to cuts to jobs, public interest reporting and programming with workers wearing the risk and pain," she said. "QandA is the latest victim of these cuts, despite playing a critical and unique role in our democracy, where the public can speak to politicians on a national stage.

"We are seeing an ongoing drive towards insecure jobs at the ABC, which also impacts staff retention and the ABC's ability to function the way the public needs."

The ABC confirmed its Q+A program would not be returning following its hiatus on Wednesday.

"We're very proud of Q+A's great achievements over the years. The team has done a terrific job, including a strong performance during the federal election campaign," said ABC News Director, Justin Stevens. "Discontinuing the program at this point is no reflection on anyone on the show.

"We always need to keep innovating and renewing, and in the two decades since Q+A began the world has changed. It's time to rethink how audiences want to interact and to evolve how we can engage with the public to include as many Australians as possible in national conversations. We'll be working on how we can continue to foster engagement of this nature in an innovative way."

New projects from the ABC will include Your Say, which will continue as a permanent initiative following its success during the federal election campaign, which saw nearly 30,000 online submissions sent in national, with 36 per cent from outside capital cities. Per the ABC, hundreds of Your Say contributions were used by News teams to inform questions put to politicians and topics for the ABC's leaders debate.

"Your Say ensures we have a strong framework for putting the public's views, concerns and questions at the heart of our journalism, complementing our daily commissioning and reporting," Stevens said. "We're keen to see what else we can do with this."