“It’s the first time SBS has been able to announce three primetime dramas”
Where does new SBS TV boss Kathryn Fink see local dramas screening on the schedule, and what genres are not on the network slate?
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under News, Top Stories, Upfronts, Video
Kathryn Fink yesterday fronted her very first SBS Upfront as Director of Television .
Melbourne-born Fink, only has some 4 months in the role but is excited by the vast slate she has inherited and oversees.
Her previous roles wee at Walt Disney Company, Sky Italia and News Corp.
“I’ve worked in media really all my life and Sky Italia was my first real TV job. Before that, I’d been working in digital media and publishing. I ended up going over to Italy, to help on the merger of two Pay TV companies,” she told TV Tonight.
“After a couple of years, I ended up running programming for Sky Italia.
“I think I was always interested in media. Initially, I think it was from an interest in the world perspective…. watching current affairs, reading newspapers, reading about the rest of the world.
“I always loved traveling and was always a consumer of all forms of media and storytelling. I’m a big reader but once I fell into television, I absolutely loved it.”
One of the key announcements yesterday were three local primetime dramas, Safe Home with Aisha Dee, Mabel Li & Virginia Gay, queer revisionist historical dramedy While the Men Are Away and anthology series Erotic Stories.
“It’s really exciting, the first time SBS has been able to announce three primetime dramas to the market. We’re gonna be leaning into that, investing more in original Australian content. We’ve also got a fantastic pipeline of projects in various stages of development,” she continued.
Now she is overseeing the content, where does the new TV boss see dramas playing out in terms of nights and timeslots?
“I think with every program, you have to look at it separately and figure out ‘How am I going to think about programming this in the best way for the audience?’ There are all sorts of ways to play with that. It could be one a week and dropping on On Demand. A couple of back to back (nights) is still an option. It’s always an option,” she explained.
“Obviously we have to look at what others in the marketplace are doing. So there’s not a general rule.”
Does SBS look to commission returnable dramas?
“Look, it’s always nice to have shows that return … it’s great for marketing as well,” Fink acknowledged. “Certainly, it’s great to have that on the acquired side.”
In Entertainment SBS confirmed more Mastermind, Celebrity Letters & Numbers, The Big Fat Quiz of Sport and Eurovision Song Contest.
“We’ll be looking at other things we can do with Entertainment. But I would actually argue that a lot of our shows are entertaining. We’ve got really entertaining food shows which are kind of crossovers between Food and Entertainment.”
With a hefty slate of Drama, Documentary, Entertainment, Sport, News, Food, Indigenous and acquired titles across its many channels, what does Fink feel is missing from the broadcaster?
“I don’t know that there’s any genre really missed. I think we’ve got a pretty broad set of programming genres.”
You can read more on announced titles: SBS, NITV, SBS Food, SBS VICELAND, SBS on Demand, SBS World Movies, SBS World Watch
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- Tagged with Erotic Stories, Safe Home, While the Men Are Away
3 Responses
They put them on in Primetime, but strip the 4 nights a week at against more popular commercial shows, so everybody just streams them on On Demand.
Safe Home looks like it might be good, but as always with announcements of local content here. There’s nothing that looks like something I would want to watch.
Very exciting to see SBS create more local drama! Especially intrigued by what the premise of “While The Men Are Away” would be.
Btw David sorry to be a pain, but you wrote “MasterChef” instead of “Mastermind”. Just thought you’d want to know.