SBS CEO and managing director Michael Ebeid to step down
The chief executive officer and managing director of multi-cultural and specialist broadcaster SBS will step down in October after 7.5 years at the helm.
SBS said it will commence the search for Michael Ebeid’s replacement immediately.
Ebeid will make an announcement about his new role in coming weeks
In April, one of Australia’s best-known media executives, John Sintras, returned to Australian shores to become the network’s chief audience and content officer, replacing Helen Kellie who passed away in December last year.
SBS said Ebeid would make an announcement about his next role in the coming weeks.
Ebeid joined the broadcasted in June 2011 as managing director, with the company saying he has since “led the organisation through a period of immense transformation, growth and achievement”.
“He has led organisational strategies and introduced new initiatives which have led to more Australians engaging with SBS than ever before,” a statement from SBS said. “These strategies ensure the organisation is well-equipped to deliver on the responsibilities of the SBS Charter, with programs and services which are relevant to an increasingly diverse Australian society, in a tough environment for media operators.”
Ebeid said the decision to step down was one of the toughest he’d ever had to make.
“Serving as SBS managing director has been a real honour and privilege and I depart feeling confident that this is the right time for a new managing director to take the organisation forward,” he said.
In addition, he said, SBS was as strong as it had ever been.
“We are more relevant than ever and we are ready for the future. Considering the struggle of societies globally to integrate diverse communities harmoniously, SBS today performs a critical role in the Australian community. We are the media organisation audiences can come to, on their preferred platform or device, for distinctive programs and different perspectives that create a better shared understanding within our diverse, multicultural society.
“We have been through a lot of change over the past seven years and our successes have only been achievable with the support of the SBS board of directors, our SBS executive team and, of course, our dedicated SBS employees. The SBS team is the most passionate and committed that I’ve worked with in my 30-year career. Our people come to work every day motivated to make an impact and I’ve learned a lot from them during my tenure.”
The company paid tribute to Ebeid and his achievements, saying he helped the network arrest its declining television audiences to achieve seven years of continuous growth and contending SBS is now regularly considered among the most trusted and impartial news sources.
In addition, SBS noted achievements including the launch of SBS On Demand in late 2011, saying it had transformed the network, in addition to the launch of NITV, SBS Food Network and SBS Viceland.
He now stands as the longest-serving managing director of SBS, which is testament to his dedication, chairman of the SBS board of directors, Dr Bulent Hass Dellal said.
“Whilst we are very disappointed that Michael is leaving us, there is no doubt that he departs an organisation which is stronger, sustainable and backed by an important and valued purpose to contribute to the ongoing social and economic development of our nation through media services which foster greater understanding and encourage social cohesion,” Dellal said.
“In particular, I commend Michael for his focus on negotiating sustainable government funding, whilst also improving commercial revenues, which have secured SBS’s financial capacity to deliver on its Charter. The Board has valued Michael’s attention to extracting value from SBS activities to position the organisation as a distinctive media provider as changes in the media sector continue to present challenges and opportunities.
“Michael had the foresight to recognise early that the SBS Charter and the organisation’s commitment to diverse multicultural communities provided an opportunity for relevant digital evolution and in-depth storytelling on new and emerging platforms; a strategy which continues to serve the organisation well. He has also invested significant time in improving employee engagement which is critical for the organisation’s future success. We certainly would not have been able to achieve such success without the absolute dedication and professionalism of our SBS people and Michael also leaves with a strong and capable leadership team in place. We wish him all the very best in his next endeavours.”
One of the best leaders in our industry! All the best, Mike.
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It is interesting that nearly every mention of Mr Ebeid’s departure is essentially a cut-and-paste from the SBS media release. There is, of course, another view of his tenure, [edited under Mumbrella’s comment moderation policy] And while the real value of staff salaries has fallen due to his intransigent obstructiveness in enterprise bargaining, executive salaries have increased predictably. Ebeid’s commitment to the Charter is also evidenced by an email to marketing instructing there to be no subtitles shown in promos, the almost complete absence of any foreign language material (other than the predictable Scandinavian crime) on SBS 1, and his effectively selling off two channels worth of bandwidth to North American networks while appointing a sequence of British executives who fancy a few years in the colonies with fancy salaries but who know nothing about multicultural policy (as is evidenced by the endless stream of documentaries about British food and British railways). This is addition to his failed attempt to increase the level of advertising in programs when it remains the thing most objected to by SBS viewers, one of many evidences of the contempt with which the place now treats its audience, in addition to the shameful shifting of timeslots for the most popular programs in another shameful attempt to maximise revenue. Ebeid has also presided over the complete evisceration of a once proud SBS news and current affairs department so that all serious challenging investigative journalism has vanished in the interests of appeasing a government which sees fit to cut funding to any network which challenges it. That, of course, is the key and the summary of everything in his seven and a half years, the desire to appease government demands and make SBS into a state broadcaster more than a public broadcaster. The timing of his departure is typically opportunistic, running off before a couple of difficult government inquiries begin, and after pulling off a World Cup scam which claimed SBS rescued it for viewers, whereas SBS caused the debacle in the first place by selling off the rights to Optus after having already secured them, this to massage the SBS accounts to please Senate Estimates. As for his own behaviour in the company, following his very first initiative of building an executive bathroom next to his office in the Artarmon building, he also pursued an almost fetishistic obsession with the Eurovision Song Contest which led to the total absurdity of Australia entering the contest, thereby somehow justifying annual junkets for himself and his partner to whichever location the contest went to. I’m sure he enjoyed his nest-feathering tenure, but some of us see through the headache-inducing managerial jargon which fills his emails (and those of his managers), and we will not miss this government poodle at all.
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Thank you Nicola for the unofficial summary of Mr Ebeid’s tenure, it accords much more with reality than the relentless corporate propaganda we have been subjected to so far.
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