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SBS quits Freeview

SBS looks to save further costs, a day after Labor vows to block more primetime advertising.

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SBS has reportedly quit as a member of Freeview, following news yesterday that Labor caucus would vote to block legislation to increase advertising in primetime.

The Australian reports Freeview membership is around $500,000 per year.

An SBS spokesperson confirmed in a statement, “Last year, SBS’s funding was cut by the federal government by $53.7 million over the next five years.

“As an organisation which is already lean and efficient, SBS has sought to find further efficiencies to absorb this cut, focusing on back office measures in order to protect SBS’s unique content offering for Australian audiences.

“Funding difficulties are unfortunately not able to be resolved at this stage, resulting in SBS’s exit from Freeview. SBS remains supportive of Freeview and looks forward to continued collaboration with its broadcasting colleagues.”

Chairman Kim Dalton told the newspaper, “We are sorry to see SBS go but more importantly this is a big loss for SBS viewers who should be offered the opportunity to access SBS programming across all available platforms.”

It’s unclear if the change will impact on SBS visibility in the Freeview platform.

Regional broadcasters Prime quit Freeview in 2014 , preceded by WIN Television in 2012.

20 Responses

  2. I would love for Freeview to die, it’s terrible my PS3 playtv I had to change my region to other instead of australia just so I could get the skip 1 minute ad button and copy to a hdd drive.

  4. Agree with everyone here, Freeview is an embarrassment and a complete waste of time. They offer no benefit whatsoever, to anyone. SBS On Demand is far better than the munted service that Freeview offers on a subset of televisions and PVRs. In fact, I’m watching the Giro D’Italia as I type this.

  5. As a salesperson who has customers everyday wanting to purchase a tv with freeview plus, this is good news. just because it has freeview plus and you have seen it on tv. dosent mean its good. any smart tv that you buy has SBS on demand which i think is better and alot easier to navigate. screw freeview plus.

  8. The issue with Freeview here is that it’s just a marketing company to counteract Foxtel, it’s not an actual ‘platform’ like you see in the UK. One of the key differences being the fact that each broadcaster is able to operate their own spectrum separately, rather than broadcasts being managed by a third party for all channels, which makes the need for a stable ‘platform’ less required. That will need to change at some stage to allow future tech transitions (ie DVBT2/MPEG4).

    1. This. Apart from the Aus implementation being a sad joke that’s 5 or 10 years too late & not as good, the standard chosen for FreeView+ is fairly open – there’s only a few operational details that make FreeView+ slightly different from the base HbbTV standard, and they’re easily implemented (and seem more designed to cripple FreeView+ anyway).

      The one thing in FreeView+ they might not be able to do independently is the combined all-broadcaster EPG. Apart from that, there’s nothing to stop SBS from implementing their own version of HbbTV in exactly the same way as FreeView+. The only difference is they won’t be able to slap the FreeView name on it…

    2. “Freeview” is nothing more than a group name for what started out as the “Federation of Australian Commercial Television Stations”(F.A.C.T.S.) but has expanded to become Free TV Australia and included the ABC and SBS as member stations. SBS departing is nothing more than a huge dummy-spit ’cause they couldn’t get their own way.

      1. This is slightly not right. Freeview is a separate company to Free TV and doesn’t have a policy/lobbying function. Free TV remains just the commercial FTAs and hasn’t been changed as a result of the separate Freeview organisation.

    3. Actually, Freeview should have no say in who transmits on the digital TV channels – this decision is the exclusive domain of the regulatory authority…. Now all we need is a competent regulatory authority to take over from the bumbling, fumbling idiots of the A.C.M.A.!

      1. They don’t – so that’s alright then.

        p.s. “FreeView” is the marketing name pushed by FreeTV Australia (and, at least originally, the name was licenced from the UK group) for their attempt at set of common requirements for DTV (mostly to restrict things like ad-skipping, etc); “FreeView+” is their implementation of the HbbTV standard. It’s a name only – it has no power over anybody who hasn’t signed on to the FreeView group, and has no say in broadcaster licencing or required DTV technical standards.

      2. What I’m trying to say here is: regardless of whether it’s digital or analogue, the final arbiter of which station gets on air, and which channel they’re allocated, is entirely up to a broadcast regulator. Whether the group is called Freeview or Free TV Australia, they are powerless to determine who gets on air. We may view our programmes on wide-screen sets with inbuilt digital tuners, or we may(in my case) have a wide-screen LCD set that only had analogue tuning, thus we needed a set-top box to receive the digital signal, these TVs or set-top boxes are not controlled by Free TV Australia, they’re bought and controlled by us, their owners! And again I say, the next thing we need is a strong, competent regulator in place of the buffoons at the A.C.M.A.

  9. seems a much bigger loss to Freeview than SBS, what if more networks get the idea and start jumping? cost cutting can get desperate and freeview membership could be an early cut?

  10. “We are sorry to see SBS go but more importantly this is a big loss for SBS viewers who should be offered the opportunity to access SBS programming across all available platforms.”

    Other than being included on TVs that have FreeView Plus, I don’t see how FreeView would make any difference to viewers not being able to access SBS programming across all platforms. SBS content is easly accessed via their own catch up site – which certainly has nothing to do with whether SBS is part of FreeView or not.

    At reportedly $500,000 per year – who could blame them for leaving – an absurd amount of money for something that just doesn’t seem to do much.

  11. Good on SBS. For months Freeview has been running ads saying we don’t have to pay for Foxtel because we have all these free digital channels and much more choice, but every time a new series comes out it is roadblocked across all channels. Freeview is a joke.

      1. I can understand using simulcasts to place sports on the anti-siphoning list on the HD channels so we get better quality will the small minority stuck with SD still get to watch them.

        But good on SBS, Freeview is a joke just used to make them feel better with Foxtel offering so much more, just look at the F1 and V8s this year on TEN it’s a joke. Since the first round of the season we’ve yet to see more of either live on TEN.

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