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Dumbing down SBS

By Peter West - posted Wednesday, 5 September 2007


These grand ideas are contradicted by the make-up of the SBS Board. Flicking through the list of directors is like checking through a list of big businesses. Westfields Holdings, Coca Cola Amatil, The Courier-Mail and many other big business and media interests are well represented. Too many people are linked in cosy ways with one powerful business after another. Yet there is a solitary member of the unions whose members work in TV.

What confidence can we have that ordinary Australians can have any say, when the rich and powerful are so entrenched in what is supposed to be public TV? Where are the educators and other people who might be dedicated to the public good? Where is the much-lauded independence from the corporate sector?

Once again, SBS’ Corporate Plan says we are “pursuing new ideas and imaginative solutions”. It all sounds exciting. This is fairly common language in advertising agencies. It’s picked up by phone companies, universities and other institutions which have sold themselves down the corporate path. And SBS promises to be “fair, clear and transparent in the way we interact with each other”. Terrific!

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Could I ask what transparent process is there for complaints to be heard? And can we have any confidence that complaints are listened to? I suspect that viewers’ criticisms are thrown in the rubbish bin. Anecdotal evidence suggests increasing frustration at the corporate path down which SBS is being dragged. I wonder what an independent audit of complaints would show?

The corporate plan even talks about “increased efficiencies through outsourcing”. Not this old warhorse! Outsourcing is often lauded as efficient, but all we do is pay expensive experts to do slick jobs that could be done in-house, and often done better. How does this encourage cost-cutting or innovation? Another “imaginative solution” or more corporate-speak? Corporations are good at paying their managers outrageous salaries and grinding opponents into the ground. There is no contest between public need and corporate greed.

And now back to the dumbing-down issue, which is where we started. If the issue of dumbing-down is important enough to discuss at the National Press Club, we need to commission proper media analysis of SBS programs. Or pay for a reputable survey agency to ask audiences what they think. Until then, all comment must be subjective.

SBS at its best has been world quality television. I urge all intelligent Australians to get out there and lobby for its retention as an intelligent and thoughtful station. The union movement and the ethnic communities need to get involved. I challenge Labor and the Greens to produce policies that will reverse the trends noted above and return SBS to its proper role.

Ditch the ads, SBS. Use the money you get from the public wisely, and do what your charter tells you to do.

The SBS Charter, provided in the SBS Act, sets out the principal functions of SBS and a number of duties it has to fulfil. The Charter, contained in Section 6 of the Special Broadcasting Services Act 1991, states:

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  1. The principal function of SBS is to provide multilingual and multicultural radio and television services that inform, educate and entertain all Australians and, in doing so, reflect Australia's multicultural society.
  2. SBS, in performing its principal function, must:
    (a) contribute to meeting the communications needs of Australia's multicultural society, including ethnic, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities; and
    (b) increase awareness of the contribution of a diversity of cultures to the continuing development of Australian society; and
    (c) promote understanding and acceptance of the cultural, linguistic and ethnic diversity of the Australian people; and
    (d) contribute to the retention and continuing development of language and other cultural skills; and
    (e) as far as practicable, inform, educate and entertain Australians in their preferred languages; and
    (f) make use of Australia's diverse creative resources; and
    (g) contribute to the overall diversity of Australian television and radio services, particularly taking into account the contribution of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the community broadcasting sector; and
    (h) contribute to extending the range of Australian television and radio services, and reflect the changing nature of Australian society, by presenting many points of view and using innovative forms of expression.

SBS Board members are listed on this site.

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About the Author

Dr Peter West is a well-known social commentator and an expert on men's and boys' issues. He is the author of Fathers, Sons and Lovers: Men Talk about Their Lives from the 1930s to Today (Finch,1996). He works part-time in the Faculty of Education, Australian Catholic University, Sydney.

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