No Royal SBS

Recent experiences with Australia’s unique Special Broadcasting System – SBS – could raise doubts about their duty to serve ethnic communities in this country. Although SBS provides an extraordinary access to news programmes from all over the world and has services in 64 languages, the service has changed in recent years. Not only has SBS introduced numerous commercial advertisements which interrupt programmes, no, it has an obsession with sports and is obviously increasingly chasing ratings to attract sponsors.

And as the RadicalRoyalist has pointed out previously, there seems to be a bias against royal(ist) news items.

The latest incident that fuels this impression is the forthcoming royal wedding in Sweden. On 19th June Crown Princess Victoria and her fiancé Daniel Westling will get married in the ancient Storkyrkan or Great Church in Stockholm. On day two, the Swedish Parliament and Government will host the revelry and on day three, the actual ceremony will take place. In conjunction with the wedding, Mr. Westling will be invested with the title Prince Daniel, Duke of Västergötland. The wedding will be held on Saturday, June 19, the same date that Sweden’s reigning King, Carl XVI Gustaf, married Queen Silvia in 1976.

SBS has in the past shown such events either whole or in part, such as the wedding of Crown Prince Felipe of Spain and of course Princess Mary of Denmark in May 2004.

Whilst one realises that the Swedish community in Australia is small, this event will be a most significant and joyful occasion for all Swedes and their friends around the world.

Everyone who contacts SBS to find out, how the TV station will satisfy this big European event receives this meagre reply:

There is likely to be highlights in the World News but we do not have any plans to show full coverage of it.
Regards,
PR (from: comments@sbs.com.au)

One can only suspect, that besides an anti-royalist approach the big money generating event in South Africa (aka Football World Cup) occupies all available free spots on SBS’s programme schedule.

What about those millions of people who do not care for football or any other ball game?

These happy royal occasions are rare and also spectacular but the RadicalRoyalist and his Swedish friends will now probably end up watching it streamed live on Swedish TV or one of the four German networks taking coverage or one of the other French, Belgian or other networks.

The wonders of the internet is that in some ways are making terrestrial TV less relevant especially given the extremely limited range of Australian television.