Pomeranz, Dempster launch petition against more SBS ads.
More ads will make SBS "Australia’s 4th fully commercial free-to-air channel by stealth," say former presenters.
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Former public broadcasting presenters Margaret Pomeranz & Quentin Dempster have backed an online petition against increasing advertising on SBS.
The proposal for increased ads from 5 to 10 minutes per hour follows government funding cuts for public broadcasters. Allowing more primetime ads, without increasing the overall daily limit, is seen as a way of offsetting a funding shortfall.
The online petition, in conjunction with lobby group Save our SBS, is hosted by GetUp.
Ex-ABC presenter turned campaign spokesperson Quentin Dempster said, “Margaret and I join this campaign to try to save SBS from forces and strategies which can only destroy it. More advertising will make SBS TV Australia’s fourth fully commercial free-to-air channel by stealth.
“The Australian commercial TV networks do not need another competitor for precious advertising dollars, particularly at a time when global players have video streaming access to Australian households from which they derive user pays fees. Many use tax havens. None contribute much to local content creation.
“At a time of geo-political tension, fear and terror Australia needs SBS focused on its reason for being – to build understanding, inclusion and cohesion to this polyglot country of ours. Its purpose is to break down bigotry, racism and xenophobia through engagement with audiences in multi-lingual services, journalism, documentary, talk back, informed conversation and entertainment. SBS should not be focused on destroying its own Charter compliance obligations to chase yet more advertising revenue. The rot started some years ago when the SBS Board abandoned long accepted legal advice and redefined ‘natural breaks’ which only allowed ads between programs, to within them.”
Save Our SBS President, Steve Aujard said, “More advertising on SBS will seriously affect SBS’s ability to be faithful to its Charter.
“The Lewis review noted this and said: ‘… there will be greater pressure on SBS management to consider the trade-off of delivering on commercial expectations, against delivering those functions described in the SBS Charter.’ (pg 85)
“In two comprehensive studies, one of 2,044 viewers in 2013 and another of 1,733 viewers in 2008 – after reading SBS’s Charter – three-quarters of SBS viewers nationally (71.6% in 2008 and 72.1% in 2013) said that since SBS TV introduced in-program advertising it is less faithful to the Charter now than it used to be. This strongly suggests that any increase in advertising in any part of the schedule will worsen SBS’s ability to adhere to its Charter obligations.
“Under the SBS Act, advertising is capped at 5 minutes per hour. It does not restrict the duration of promos and station IDs. SBS broadcasts 4 minutes of promos and 5 minutes of advertisements per hour in primetime. If the law is amended, eventually SBS will broadcast 14 minutes of disruptive commercial breaks per hour in peak viewing – 6pm to midnight and in sport (10 minutes of ads plus 4 minutes of promos every hour). This is one minute more than commercial TV.
“The Lewis review recommended SBS be permitted to increase advertising by selling the unsold spots from non-peak periods and adding that to primetime and sport.”
The proposal for more ads has also been heavily criticised by Free TV Australia and commercial network CEOS. Yet to be passed by Parliament, it nevertheless has the backing of Managing Director Michael Ebeid,
“I am confident and committed that should this legislation pass Parliament, SBS would only implement additional advertising in programs and timeslots where the advertising return could genuinely aid our ability to invest in more Australian content,” he has said previously.
10 Responses
SBS is an idea whose time has passed. One, properly funded, public funded broadcaster has the infrastructure to programme whatever it is that SBS is supposed to be doing. Their so called “brand” has been lost in the wilderness for a very long time. The Tony Iffland years has sealed its fate.
Dempster and Pomeranz should stick to things that concern them. They’re not SBS employees. As someone who actually does work for the organisation, a change in the way we’re allowed to have advertising could be the financial saviour we need. Anything that allows less dependence on the whims of a government is a good thing. Get-Up and friends should just Shut-Up.
@Armchair Analyst, inform Australia of what? How crime works in Scandinavia?
I think a compromise would be to have SBS2 have more ads and SBSONE less or just stay the same as now. That would help SBS financialy and they could still keep their important duty to properly inform people.
Just before SBS launched it’s current ad regime, they claimed the change would bring in an extra $20m per year. About this time, they claimed they were spending $20m on two years of Top Gear Australia (including BBC licensing).
Now that their Top Gear licence is long gone, does this mean they can cut the ad breaks back by half?
Alternatively, could SBS consider only running paid commercials during it’s intra-show breaks, and leave the network promos for between shows? The ads would have so much more cut through, and they would lose no ad-revenue.
I understand the point of all the promos is boosting viewership, but surely it encourages more channel skipping away than it brings people in.
As an SBS2 viewer, in exchange for losing some of the intra-program promotion, I would be happy to encourage the other three or four of us to say, receive an email newsletter (with video)…
Commercial FTA faces advertising competition from radio, Pay TV, Billboards, Newspapers and Google. They’ve been given a 50% discount on the licences fees and 2 extra channels + shopping channels so they can’t claim to be hardly done by. SBS isn’t even significant enough to be included in the advertising statistics.
SBS showing a block of ads and promos between programmes raised even less money and reduced the audience because people went elsewhere for 10 minutes and never came back.
SBS does use most of its ad revenue to fund local content and always has.
The idea of two competing public broadcasters is crazy anyway just look at ABC2 v SBS2 and the Asian Cup debarcles. SBS TV doesn’t even pretend to follow its charter and serves no purpose.
@ Spaceman. SBS dropped the “block” advertising between shows some years ago as it wasn’t effective. It was good for viewers, bad for advertisers. Maybe we need a SBS Lottery?
IMO the Govt is under instructions from Mr Murdoch to reduce the competition to Foxtel and his newspapers. Destroy Public Boadcasting, eliminate TV download “piracy”, slow the roll-out of high speed broadband, handcuff the ABC Newroom, etc. It’s the “after the horse has bolted” approach.
Reduced taxpayer funding for SBS inevitably means more ads, unless Quentin and Margaret have thought of another way for SBS to survive. A bit of soft-core porn on the (spare) HD channel?
It’s gone, guys. It died nearly 9 years ago, in October 2006. It’d been a near thing for years, but that’s when SBS took its last gasp, shuddered, and became a commercial channel.
Time to face the truth and pull the public funding plug. Leave its rotting corpse to stand as an example of what happens when we think public assets can become ‘just a little bit pregnant’…
Advertising is used for reclamation of funds. However, it should only be used if it really needs to be. Advertising deters viewers from tuning in if there are constant interruptions during programming. The aim should be to have as less advertising as possible. Or to minimise the effect of advertising in programming.
SBS already has a good system where the majority of reclamation advertising is shown between programming, instead of during programming events.