Should SBS be launching a competitor to existing cash strapped gay press?
SBS is preparing to launch a new sexuality website focusing on LGBTI issues. Nic Christensen welcomes the initiative but worries the public broadcaster’s entrance might pose a major threat to other struggling gay media.
Let me be clear upfront: I welcome more reporting on issues around the complex issues involving sexuality and LGBTIQ issues.
The more of these stories in mainstream press it helps bring key issues and a fresh perspective to a broader Australian audience and can only be a good thing… right? Well not necessarily.
Opponents of public broadcasting are always looking for a cheap and easy way to kick both the ABC and SBS and in the case of this new website, multicultural broadcaster SBS is preparing to launch, they may be about to hand them a fresh bucketload of ammunition.
TBH, this approach really concerns me. I love my SBS and I desperately want it to cut through. But it seems to be lurching all over the place. Food? More LGBTI stuff? I think this has been covered elsewhere on their site and out in the market as this article points out. I’d have thought they’d try to fix SBS 2 first before going out into other areas. Who’s running this joint?
Interesting you mention the ABC Fact Checking debacle. The ABC has already said publicly that it is cancelling specialist NBN coverage to let political viewpoints and the Fact Checking unit focus on them instead. But the Promise Checker on the ABC’s website is straight outta Malcolm Turnbull’s press office. That they put private media out of business to deliver propaganda that makes them sound like a state broadcaster should trouble us all.
The commercial neutrality provisions of government are way too weak to allow government funded organisations to compete in the commercial space. Would SBS launch this site if they had to fully fund it’s real cost same as their competitors – not a chance. This screws the advertising market just as much as say the Comcar drivers started moonlighting in competition to Uber and the Taxis, whilst we pay for their petrol and vehicle. Sure let SBS play, but don’t fund them to compete!
Sure. SBS no doubt sees its charter’s pledge to reflect diversity:
“2 (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.”
So far so good. Can we therefore expect an SBS site for the Abetz/Bernadi Tea Party, or maybe the Right to Life mob? I doubt it, and so I question the somewhat partial motives here.
But never mind, no one’s watching (certainly no one in any kind of authority) because otherwise somebody might have picked up the interesting trend on SBS1 away from anoher charter pledge, the one right at the top:
“(1) The principal function of SBS is to provide multilingual and multicultural radio, television and digital media services that inform, educate and entertain all Australians and, in doing so, reflect Australia’s multicultural society.”
Seldom multilingual during peak viewing and more, with programming that’s mostly a curious mix of British “Discovery channel”-type stuff, by Brits or about them, plus some rather trans-Atlantic entertainment offerings. Good as Michael Portillo or Fargo maybe, they reveal a lack of interest in Australia’s ethnic diversity or its community needs – and anybody’s interest in the television or movie outputs of those community’s homelands.
And if I recall, one those communities and also the countries they came from were prominent in SBS news and current affairs programs. Now they’re buried after imitation ABC stories about federal politics.
That once made SBS truly unique and enjoyable. Now it is a cheaper imitation of Foxtel, as long as you don’t mind repeats of Rick Stein or tours of British castles and tunnels!
Who is running this joint? No great secrets there.
1. Michael Ebeid, ex-Optus marketer.
2. British expat Helen Kellie, ex-Reckitt Benckiser and BBC marketer.
3. Ex-ITV head of marketing Amanda McGregor, now SBS director of… marketing.
Need I go on? Not really.