SBS TV

'SBS TV', sometimes 'SBS', is a national public television channel in Australia. It is the primary television service of the Special Broadcasting Service. Launched on 24 October 1980, the channel is available nationally and has a market share of over 5% of viewers.

Contents

History

Programming

News & Current Affairs

Sport

Current schedule

Advertising

Presentation

Availability

Logos

References

See also

External links

History

SBS TV began test transmissions in April 1979 when it showed various foreign language programs on ABV-2 Melbourne and ABN-2 Sydney on Sunday mornings. Full-time transmission began at 6.30pm on October 24, 1980 (United Nations Day) as Channel 0/28. At the time SBS was broadcasting on UHF Channel 28 and VHF Channel 0. Bruce Gyngell, who introduced television to Australia back in 1956 was given the task of introducing the first batch of programs on the new station.The first program shown was a documentary on multiculturalism entitled ''"Who Are We?"'' which was hosted,produced and directed by well-known Australian journalist Peter Luck.
On 16 October, 1983 the service expanded into Canberra, Cooma, and Goulburn and at the same time changed its name to Network 0-28. Its new slogan was the long-running "Bringing the World Back Home".
On 18 February, 1985 the station changed its name to SBS and began daytime transmissions. In June SBS expanded to Brisbane, Adelaide, Newcastle, Wollongong and the Gold Coast.
On 5 January, 1986 SBS TV ceased broadcasting on the VHF0 frequency. The reason being that it was only there so people could have time to convert over to UHF.
On 16 March, 1986 SBS TV commenced transmission in Perth and Hobart. Darwin was the last capital city to receive SBS, with a local signal launched on May 20, 1994.
SBS TV started as a non-commercial television channel but as of 1991 began accepting and broadcasting television advertisements (a controversial move at the time) shown ''between'' programs. In 2006 this was extended, again generating controversy, to advertisements shown ''during'' programs.
On December 14, 2006 the Special Broadcasting Service announced its intention to change to 720p as its High Definition transmission standard for SBS HD.^[1] This was after SBS had aired many HD programmes in the 576p standard.

Programming

SBS TV runs several imported drama and comedy series, including shows produced in languages other than English as well as notably risqué material that would not be shown on other broadcast networks in Australia - for instance, ''South Park'', or ''Queer as Folk''. It also screens a broad selection of films from around the world, the relatively relaxed attitude to sexuality on SBS gave it the nickname "Sex Before Sleep", or, combined with its soccer focus, "Sex and bloody Soccer", "Sex, Boobs, (and) Soccer" and "Sex Between Soccer". SBS's late-night programming is generally (and often humorously) acknowledged to be more risqué than that of other Australian television stations. Programming earlier in the day - including shows such as ''Global Village'' - displays the more traditional aspect of SBS by featuring material from around the world.
It recently began producing its own local comedy series (of which ''Pizza'', ''Life Support'' and John Safran's series, and reality television series, Nerds FC are examples), characterised by obviously tiny budgets and the preparedness to push the boundaries of acceptable television humour - and, according to some, with considerable success. It is also popular with niche groups such as anime fans for showing Neon Genesis Evangelion, Samurai Champloo and the Studio Ghibli movies, as well as several cult movies.
One SBS institution was ''The Movie Show'', a movie review show something in the vein of ''Siskel and Ebert'' in the United States (but actually predating it). The two presenters of the show, David Stratton and Margaret Pomeranz, "defected" to the ABC in April 2004 to host a new program called ''At the Movies''. ''The Movie Show'' continued with four new hosts - Megan Spencer, Jaimie Leonarder, Fenella Kernebone and Marc Fennell. However, much of its audience also defected to the ABC's new programme, and ratings declined. The final episode of ''The Movie Show'' aired in June 2006, after the show was axed. In 2007 The Movie Show returned with a new interactive 10 minute format, presented by Lisa Hensley and Michael Adams.
''Dadı'', the Turkish version of the American sitcom ''The Nanny'' is shown late nights on SBS, as are numerous sitcoms, soap operas, drama series and movies from the non-English speaking world, including Mexican and Brazilian ''telenovelas'', Bollywood movies, etc. Such programming is subtitled in English.
SBS has started to attract a much wider following to its programming through: ''MythBusters'', ''Top Gear'', ''Inspector Rex'', ''Big Love'' and ''Nighty Night''.
The Eurovision Song Contest is a popular singing contest broadcast annually and is one of the most anticipated events on SBS.
Late at night, when there is no scheduled programming, SBS usually broadcasts a weatherwatch program which shows a weather map of Australia. In late 2005, the program was changed to feature weather information from cities around the world, along with a short clip of selected cities.

News & Current Affairs

Main articles: SBS World News

SBS has a range of news and current affairs programming, including its nightly, national, news service SBS World News, investigative programme Dateline, discussion forum Insight, indigenous affairs program Living Black, in addition to its morning World Watch timeslot, featuring bulletins in languages other than English. Until early 2007, Toyota World Sport was shown on weeknights until it was axed to accommodate the relaunched, one-hour World News Australia.
It also broadcasts foreign language news on its second digital channel, the SBS World News Channel, sometimes also used to provide additional information, highlights, and statistics for programmes shown on the main channel, such as the FIFA World Cup.

Sport

In previous years, sport shown on SBS has been limited to cycling, football (soccer) and a number of other lesser promoted sports. The FIFA World Cup has been broadcast every four years since 1982. SBS also holds the right to and airs all the live stages of the Tour de France. However in recent times SBS has also aired other sporting events including some of the 2004 Summer Olympics, the complete 2005 Ashes test series (Cricket) and the NFL's Super Bowl. The 2010 and 2014 FIFA World Cups will be shown on SBS, even with Fox Sports getting a deal to show most of the Australia's international matches and more international soccer. There had even been rumours of deals involving SBS in the AFL TV rights deal for 2007, though the Seven/Ten consortium eventually on-sold rights to Fox Sports. SBS also holds the 2007-2009 World Rally Championship TV rights. SBS has announced it will again air live coverage of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing with the Seven Network.
Football (soccer) has become one of SBS's most successful television products in recent years due to Australia's performance at the 2006 FIFA World Cup and the increased popularity of the world game. SBS is renowned for its dedication in bringing soccer to Australia and has shown and produce a number of soccer related shows to the public including:

★ The World Game

★ The Champions League Hour

★ Goalissmo

★ Football Stars of Tomorrow

★ UEFA Champions League Magazine
In addition it holds the soccer rights to and air live commercial free:

★ The UEFA Champions League (ends 2009)

★ The UEFA Cup

★ FIFA World Cup (ends 2014)

★ All FIFA events

★ FA Cup (Final)

★ UEFA Euro Championship qualifiers
Due to being a public broadcaster, SBS has struggled to obtain the TV rights for the major European leagues such as the English Premier League, La Liga, Serie A and the Australian A-League. Competition from the major pay TV networks include Fox Sports, ESPN and more recently Setanta Sports. Previously SBS screened the popular EPL weekly highlights show before the EPL went exclusively to Fox Sports.

Current schedule

	6:00 PM	6:30 PM	7:00 PM	7:30 PM	8:00 PM	8:30 PM	9:00 PM	9:30 PM	10:00 PM
SUN	''Thalassa''	''World News Australia''		''Lost Worlds''		''Moon For Sale''		''Decadence''	''Fifa U17 final''
MON	''Global Village''			''MythBusters''		''South Park''	''Bro' Town''	''World News Australia''	''Shameless''
TUE				''Insight''		''Cutting Edge''			''Hot Docs''
WED	''Living Black''			''FIFA Women's World Cup 2007 Ghana v Australia''					''World News''
THU	''Global Village''			''Inspector Rex''		''Unit One''			''The Movie Show''
FRI				''Documentary''		''Documentary''			''Russian Dolls''
SAT	''Documentary''			''Lonely Planet Six Degrees''		''Iron Chef''		''RocKwiz''	''La Spagnola''

'Note':
''News & Current Affairs'' are in 'Grey';
''Drama'' is in 'Blue';
''Sitcoms'', ''Animation'' and ''Comedy'' are in 'Purple';
''Lifestyle programs'' are in 'Green';
''Factual programs'' and ''Documentaries'' are 'Yellow';
''Reality'', ''Game shows'' and ''Talk shows'' are in 'Red';
''Sport'' is in 'Orange';
''Movies'' are in 'Pink'.
The above represents SBS's usual primetime schedule. It does not reflect one-off events, and program starting times may vary from those shown. For up-to-date information, see the Special Broadcasting Service's online television guide. (link)

Advertising

SBS was initially broadcast without commercial interests, however in 1991, the channel introduced advertising in between programming.
On June 1, 2006, the SBS managing director Shaun Brown announced the corporation's desire to initiate in-show ad breaks. He claimed that the move would raise $10 million in the first year, as he believes that SBS's current strategy of showing ads between programs "is unpopular with viewers". "On average we lose more than half our audience during these breaks - this is 30 per cent more than other broadcasters", claimed Brown upon announcing the new move.^[2]
SBS's ad breaks remain at their existing statutory limit of five minutes per hour, as opposed to the fifteen minutes per hour permitted on Australia's fully commercial stations. An individual break lasts between one and two minutes. A related change was the launch of a one-hour 6:30pm edition of World News Australia, replacing the half-hour World News Australia and World Sport programs.
In-show advertising began on October 9, 2006 during the 7.30pm broadcast of MythBusters.

Presentation

SBS TV uses subtitles in preference to dubbing when non dubbed programs are available. These do not interfere with the natural sounds of a movie, so viewers who understand the language can watch with ease. Subtitles are used on non-English speaking movies and shows. The subtitles usually consist of bold yellow text with a tint of a thin black border on a transparent background, positioned at the bottom centre of the television screen. This gives the best text legibility on the screen to viewers.
In addition to presenting material in its original language, SBS TV presents material in its original aspect ratio whenever possible, instead of cutting off the sides of the image and "zooming in" to 4:3 (or with the advent of digital television, 16:9), as is common on the commercial networks. Thus, many programs appear with black bars above and below the picture, allowing the viewer to experience the full wide-screen shot as intended. The image is also often shifted up slightly to allow the subtitles to be displayed without overlapping the picture.
It is also noted that SBS TV presents material in its original tempo whenever possible , where it would typically be sped up by 4.17% by using the standard PAL technique of running 24 fps media at 25 fps.

Availability

SBS TV is available on all of SBS Television's television transmitters in Analogue, SD Digital, and 576p HD Digital. The channel only differs from each state during major sporting events, where scheduling times are altered.

Logos

'SBS TV' has used many logos throughout its history.

1980 - 1983	1983 - 1985	1985 - 1988	1989 - 1992	1993 - present

References

1. SBS chooses 720p High Definition
2. SBS caves in over ad breaks

See also

★ Special Broadcasting Service

★ SBS World News Channel

★ SBS Essential

★ SBS independent

External links

★ Official Site