American Life
Given that I’m a little pms-y, last week’s This American Life on Kid Logic made me cry. Not only was the show really good, but it also had this homeyness that made it really special. I’m probably listening to more This American Life now that I’m not at home - because I was never in my car at 7 on a Friday night or alert enough on Saturday morning - and really, it’s pretty amazing. We’re lucky to have a great public radio station in Chicago and good public television as well, which leads me to a point I wasn’t intending to make tonight after the jump. It’s about Australian public television.
It’s really… odd.
Check it out. There are two public television stations: the ABC and SBS. ABC stands, unsurprisingly, for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. It was originally established for radio content, but began television broadcasts in 1956. It runs primarily Australian and English programming commercial-free, as it is completely funded by the government. There is no membership by the public. Given that Australia only has 20 million citizens, there is only one ABC - there are no local affiliates.
SBS was formed in 1977 as part of a campaign promise by the guy who won the election that year. SBS’s job was to provide practical content for recently-arrived immigrants, such as job skills, English lessons, etc. Over time, the content has expanded to provide news from other countries in local languages, foreign language films with subtitles, etc. The idea was to promote a sense of multiculturalism in Australia.
Since the arrival of John Howard, governmental interest in multiculturalism has… lessened. Look up Pauline Hanson and the One Nation Party for the long version.* The short version is that the government seems to view multiculturalism as anti-Australian, and has tacitly approved of several anti-immigrant and anti-multicultural people and decisions. One more overt move was to reduce funding for SBS. As a result they have had to introduce commercials and more mainstream content, notably South Park and Queer as Folk. Now, these programs are officially included for their diversity, but are run during prime time whereas the Italian news is run during the day when no one is home.
Here’s the kicker, though: SBS stands for Special Broadcasting Service.
Really.
So, on one hand we have the fully-funded Australian Broadcasting Service running white content and on the other the marginalized Special Broadcasting Service running immigrant and world content. Now, for me, the name is insane (then again, we’re talking about a country that sells Coon Brand cheese, so…), but the politics of it all are even more off the deep end.
Learning things already. Though I did drop that class.
* - While you’re at it. Check out the Children Overboard scandal that won Howard re-election in 2001.
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