SBS sells itself short

SBS still describes itself as “the voice and vision of multicultural Australia” but programs in languages other than English (LOTE) have almost disappeared from prime time.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority defines prime time as the hours between 6pm and 10.30pm. A check of the program schedule for SBS TV for the 14 days between February 22 and March 6, 2008 reveals that just less than 80 per cent of programs were in English.

Moreover those programs which are broadcast in LOTE during prime time bear practically no relationship to how the languages in question were spoken in the community. For example Chinese languages (Mandarin and Cantonese) together accounted for just 0.8 per cent of prime time broadcasts. However Mandarin and Cantonese, taken together, account for 27.09 per cent of all LOTE spoken in Australia.

Advertising has not only affected the language issue. It has also led to a sameness in programming. According to Dr Glenn Withers this is part of a broader economic phenomenon known the Principle of Minimum Differentiation (PDF 130KB):

The reason for this is that stations based on advertising revenue will seek to maximize their audience (and thereby their revenue). Stations will therefore duplicate program types as long as the audience share obtained is greater than that from other programs. Hence a number of stations may compete by sharing a market for one type of program (such as crime dramas) and still do better in audience numbers than by providing programs of other types (such as arts and culture). In economics this point is an application of the Principle of Minimum Differentiation, a principle also capable of explaining such associated phenomenon as why bank branches may cluster together, why airline schedules may be parallel, and why political parties may have convergent policy platforms.

Ethnic communities have been quick to notice the changes. In December 2003 Federation of Ethnic Communities Council (FECCA) Chair Abd Malik said:

The only people who like SBS TV now are the cappuccino crowd … it’s mostly sex and soccer I think. He added that FECCA was “very close to giving up on SBS TV … they have separated themselves from ethnic communities. They don’t come to our functions or religious festivals.

The dismissive, not to say insulting, response from then SBS Managing Director Nigel Milan was “We’re not going to cover the clog dancing from the Brisbane Town Hall”.

In June 2005 George Zangalis, President of the National Ethnic and Multicultural Broadcasters Council, and a former member of the SBS board, issued a media release criticising the direction of SBS TV:

Programming in community languages has shrunk, while English programming has grown. Advertising has increased and become increasingly strident. Rather than focusing on different cultures, the SBS seems to be moving towards mainstream sports like cricket and now AFL. There is plenty of this type of programming on the ABC and the three commercial channels.

In June 2006, interviewed on ABC radio the new Chair of FECCA, Voula Mesimeri responded:

… the intention of having the special broadcaster is so that they can be a multicultural provider, a special broadcaster in terms of being different from commercial enterprise, and I think that this will make it, increasingly, look very much like mainstream, commercial enterprise.

While advertisements have brought in extra money, much of that money seems to be going to the kind of programs that can be found on commercial stations. For example some $10 million is to be spent on a locally produced motoring program, in English.