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Appendix B: Overview of the ABC and SBS
The Australian Broadcasting Commission was created in 1932; the first ABC radio broadcast took place on 1 July that year. It began television broadcasting in 1956 and became an independent corporation in 1983. The Special Broadcasting Service commenced broadcasting in 1975. It began television broadcasting in 1980 and became an independent corporation in 1991.
Legislation
The ABC and SBS are independent statutory authorities established by legislation32 and their roles and functions are set out in their respective Charters.33
The ABC Charter requires the ABC, among other things, to:
- provide within Australia innovative and comprehensive broadcasting services of a high standard
- provide programs that contribute to a sense of national identity and inform and entertain, and reflect the cultural diversity of, the Australian community
- provide broadcasting programs of an educational nature
- promote the musical, dramatic and other performing arts in Australia
- transmit to other countries programs of news, current affairs, entertainment and cultural enrichment that encourage awareness of Australia and an international understanding of Australian attitudes on world affairs.
The SBS Charter states that the principal function of SBS is to provide multilingual and multicultural radio and television services that inform, educate and entertain all Australians, and in doing so, reflect Australia's multicultural society. SBS also has specific functions, including, to contribute to meeting the communication needs of Australia's ethnic and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and promoting understanding and acceptance of the cultural, linguistic and ethnic diversity of the Australian people.
Each corporation is governed by a board of directors appointed by the Governor-General on the recommendation of the Australian Government of the day. The Government has committed to implementing a new selection process for non-executive directors to the ABC and SBS boards that will increase transparency and provide for future appointments to be based on merit and assessed by a nomination panel.
The affairs of the ABC and SBS are managed by their respective managing directors, who are appointed by their boards. The boards are independent of the Government in determining policies relating to the functions of the broadcasters.
Funding
The ABC and SBS receive the majority of their funding from the Australian Government through three-year (or triennial) funding arrangements, as shown in the following figures. The ABC and SBS earn additional revenue through businesses activities, including merchandising, and (for SBS) advertising. The ABC's total commercial revenue from goods and services in 2006-07 was $150.4 million and for SBS it was $50.5 million.
The SBS Act allows SBS to broadcast advertisements that run during periods before programs commence, after programs end or during natural program breaks. These advertisements must not run for more than five minutes in any hour of broadcasting. The ABC Act prohibits the ABC from broadcasting any advertising on its domestic television and radio services.
Figure 4: ABC revenue 2006-07
Figure 4: ABC revenue 2006-07 - text version
Source: Data taken from Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Annual Report 2007, p. 160.
Figure 5: SBS revenue 2006-07
Figure 5: SBS revenue 2006-07 - text version
Source: Data taken from Special Broadcasting Service, Annual Report 2007, p. 88 and pp. 10102.
Programming
The ABC and SBS provide programming across a wide range of genres, including news, current affairs, drama, comedy, documentary and children's programming. For television, this range is highlighted in the following charts.
Figure 6: ABC programming 2006-07
Figure 6: ABC programming 2006-07 - text version
Source: Data taken from Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Annual Report 2007, p 184.
Figure 7: SBS programming 2006-07
Figure 7: SBS programming 2006-07 - text version
Source: Data taken from Special Broadcasting Service, Annual Report 2007, p 15.
Availability
The ABC's analog television service ('ABC1') was available to 98.28 per cent of the Australian population and its digital services ('ABC1' and 'ABC2') were available to 97.02 per cent of the population in 2006-07.34 ABC television had a combined weekly audience of more than 12 million Australians in 2006-07.
The international television service, Australia Network, reaches 21 million homes across the Asia-Pacific region with a measured monthly audience of around seven million viewers.
ABC Radio services achieved an average weekly audience of 3.7 million listeners across five capital cities (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth) in 2006-07. Across these five cities, the average weekly audience for the various radio networks in 2006-07 was:
| triple j | 1.0 million listeners |
| ABC Classic FM | 640 000 listeners |
| Radio National | 659 000 listeners |
| NewsRadio | 620 000 listeners |
| Local radio | 2.2 million listeners |
ABC also offers the online radio services dig, dig jazz and dig country, which are transmitted on its digital television platform.
The ABC's international radio network, Radio Australia, operates in 40 countries and has a weekly audience of more than 1 million listeners.
In 2006-07, ABC Online averaged more than 2.1 million unique users per month and had more than 102 million monthly page views. In June 2007, ABC audiences downloaded more than two million ABC Radio programs and 1.8 million ABC television and news videos. The ABC launched a full screen internet television service (iView) in July 2008.
ABC products are available across Australia through an extensive retail network, as well as the ABC Shop Online and an order-based customer delivery service. Revenue from merchandising in 2006-07 was $82.2 million, an increase of 1.3 per cent over the previous year.35
SBS television (analog and digital) covers more than 95 per cent of the Australian population. In 2006, SBS television achieved an average weekly audience of 5.43 million viewers in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide, and 2.66 million viewers in regional areas.
SBS Radio broadcasts its programs in analog to all capital cities and some regional centres. SBS Radio is also available on SBS's digital television service and via a digital satellite service. Programs are broadcast in 68 languages and audience surveys commissioned by SBS indicate that radio programming is heard by more than 800 000 listeners across the country each week.
SBS Online received an average of 469 000 unique users per month in 2006-07. A total of 3.21 million audio file accesses (streaming and downloadable media) and some 2.54 million video file accesses (streaming and downloadable media) were registered in 2006-07.
Footnotes
- Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act 1983 (the 'ABC Act') and the Special Broadcasting Service Act 1991 (the 'SBS Act') respectively.
- See Section 6 of the ABC Act and SBS Act respectively.
- 100 per cent coverage of the population is achieved via satellite for both ABC and SBS services.
- Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Annual Report 2007, p. 160.