SBS board member urges return to multi-lingual
One of SBS' newest board members wants the broadcaster to return to its multicultural roots.
- Published by David Knox
- on
- Filed under News
Last week the Rudd Government made four new merit-based appointments in an attempt to remove political interference from the ABC and SBC boards. New SBS board member Elleni Bereded-Samuel believes the multicultural radio and TV network should serve Australia’s diverse multi-lingual society.
“I want to use my ability to engage more with communities and to remind the SBS board and management why SBS has been set up — to serve the multicultural society,” the former Ethiopian journalist told The Australian.
Bereded-Samuel is already very close to SBS as the head of its community advisory committee and she says the board has been keen to engage more with ethnic communities since the Rudd Government was elected.
She represents a strong signal the Government wants SBS to return to its multicultural roots and away from the boutique Channel-4 style broadcaster it was becoming.
“I can tell them how it can do that,” she says. “It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen. I have a great link to the grassroots of the community and the knowledge and skill to interact with the board.”
Source: The Australian
9 Responses
Although the whole point of SBS is to be the multi-lingual broadcaster, I can say personally if it were to decrease the level of english spoken content I would not watch and I can safely say that the rest of my family would do the same. Yes we live in a multi-cultural society I know that, we hear and see it every day. But when it comes down to the crunch SBS does have many foreign language elements to it:
– News on SBS Two
– Movies nightly on SBS One
– Radio across the two SBS Radio stations
– Sport (Football being the world game)
– Drama with Inspector Rex
In cases where programs are in English they tend to have a global focus, thus fulfilling the SBS agenda. So I would leave SBS in the direction it is going, and perhaps increase the level of LOTE programs on SBS Three and SBS Four.
Rightly or wrongly SBS has for many years argued its role isn’t multi-lingual but multicultural. Cultures transcend more than language & ethnicity and incorporate seniors, youth, gay and lesbian, and more…
There’s no point in screening foreign language programs just for the sake of adhering to some stupid old charter. You can get more across and entertain far more viewers if the programs are in the language most Australians understand – English! SBS is, after all, funded by money forcibly taken from Australian public, so the least they can do is cater for the needs of the majority. Now, from this you could draw the conclusion that seeing as English is the first language of 99 percent of Australians (that’s a guess), then 99 percent of SBS’s programs should be in English. However, this does not take into account that fact that there is a demand for non-English language programs amongst the English speaking population, especially with regard to the expectations they place on SBS, and therefore I think it is probably appropriate for SBS to continue on in a similar fashion to as it is now.
Ultimately, the best way for them to determine what sort of programs their funding base desires is to closely monitor their ratings. I’m sure this is what SBS management are already doing, which is why we see the vast majority of prime-time programs being in English. When I want to watch a foreign film, as I sometimes do, I am more than content to either stay up until 10 or 11 o’clock or to set my tape recorder, because unlike this Elleni Bereded-Samuel character, my ego is not to inflated that I believe my personal tastes (or even worse, my political agendas) should determine what is screened on a public channel we are all forced to pay for.
I totally agree with Zen Man.
@ WhatAJoke – the “multi-lingual rubbish” is not just aimed at people who cannot speak English. It provides news from countries that many Australians come from, or where they have family and friends, news that is not reported on local channels or pay TV. It’s a shame this cannot be subtitled, apparently this is due to the tight timeframes involved in getting them to air. As for foreign films, SBS provides the big yellow subtitling for these and I presume you can read?
Channel 31 is more multi-lingual that SBS.
I think SBS is fine as it is, it provides programming for many language backgrounds including english. I personally don’t mind foreign language content but there should be english subtitles during foreign news programs so everyone can watch the programs as well as making it easier to improve english reading and writing skills and for english speaking people to learn foreign languages.
SBS should stick to the nice demographic it’s been building up (for advertising dollars) these years – middle class, university educated white folk. Those non-English speaking types just don’t bring in the money, plus it’s probably coz all the Anglos running the supposedly multicultural network got bored of multiculturalism and just went back to European wannabe-ism.
I know I’m going to get ripped to shreds for saying this, but: If all Australians could understand English, as they should have to, there’d be no need for this ‘multi-lingual’ rubbish. SBS – Keep doing what you’re doing – Don’t go back to the way you were!
Channel 4 started as a boutique. It now shows Big Brother, The Simpsons, Deal or No Deal, Smallville, The Big Bang Theory. Very high-brow!