It's safe to say that "watching movies on SBS to be culturally enlightened" is more or less the "I read Playboy for the articles" of the late-20th/early-21st Century. If it's got bonking, sucking, fingering, jizzing, faffing or rutting, so long as it's delivered either a) in another language, b) in an arty manner, or c) all of the above, SBS want to show it to YOU!

Unfortunately, it seems the Australian Communications and Media Authority tuned in the one night when a Japanese schoolgirl wasn't getting made an honest woman by a tentacle monster, and instead chose to check out the rather thoughtful and low-key documentary, Obscene Machines, which aired last year (with a rating of MA15+) - and they have a few things to discuss with SBS at dinner tonight, young man/lady!

The documentary focused on how technology is used to spice up sex lives, including items such as robotic sex machines and vaguely life-like dolls.

ACMA noted two segments that breached broadcasting rules and were unsuitable for screening in the MA15+ category.

One two-and-a-half-minute segment featured close-up shots of a naked woman apparently being penetrated by a mechanical dildo; the other focused on an elderly man's use of a life-like sex doll called Emma, modelled on his 18-year-old ex-wife.

ACMA rejected SBS's argument that a large proportion of the program dealt with the sexual activities of the old and disabled and was informational.

"ACMA considers that the treatment of the subject matter in Obscene Machines is adult in nature and is therefore unsuitable for ordinary 15-year-old audience members," it said in its report.

We also watched Obscene Machines when it screened last year, and the only part we'd vaguely agree with the ACMA on is that the old dude with the barely-legal-looking Real Doll was a bit of a creep.

The rest of it was actually quite wonderful, particularly the stuff about the disabled employing "bot sex" (i.e., with 'robots', not up the back door) to rediscover their sexuality, so it's a shame the ACMA have to get all hot under the collar about this in particular.

People who like to have sexy with Johnny 5 are people too, ACMA!

Former star of SBS program The Movie Show (and personal foe of Zach Braff) Margaret Pomeranz has written an article for today's Crikey mailout in which she displays both support for newsreader Mary Kostakidis, as well as contempt for the current management of SBS.

Here's a brief excerpt to whet your tastebuds.

The recent acrimonious departure of Mary Kostakidis is the last in the long line of defections and ejections from SBS under the current management. The organization has been stripped of just about anyone who had any connection to an SBS where an ethos of commitment pervaded the organization. There has been a cultural genocide at the place.

...

Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, that dollar will ultimately shape programming. The antics of Paris Hilton are well-covered on the commercial broadcasters, what is the justification for including a story about her at the top end of the SBS news? Did anyone mention dumbing-down?

You could perhaps justify the changes if they proved more relevant to more Australians. But the reverse has been the case. SBS news was respected, valued and watched. In its new, more commercial incarnation it is actually less watched. It's sad to see the demise of this flagship of SBS as the ratings plummeted with the new format. A format very much like Channel 9. Or 7. Or 10.

Touche.

Meanwhile, smh.com.au has Paul Sheehan declaring that SBS is "an indulgence we don't need", stating, amongst other things -

the problems facing SBS, in particular, are bigger than any personality or any management policy. The problem is structural. The real question facing the Federal Government, and the overwhelming majority of taxpayers who pay for SBS but rarely watch it, is whether SBS should continue to exist at all.

I think it should go. Because SBS is more valuable dead than alive.

The Special Broadcasting Service Act should be repealed, the corporation dismantled and sold and its valuable broadcasting spectrum auctioned off. SBS has outlived its charter, and the charter has always been of dubious social utility. (I quote, in part: "As far as practicable, inform, educate and entertain Australians in their preferred languages.")

Australia has moved on. The term "ethnic" is now laughably outdated. Technology has been transformed.

Ooer. Personally, this has been the most interesting SBS has ever been in our eyes, excluding the period when it had the show Life Support, and the night we stumbled across Inspector Rex for the first time.

Avid SBS viewers will have noticed that figurehead news presenter Mary Kostakidis has been missing from the news desk for the past week or so, but it was only a few days ago that word emerged that was not merely taking a break and she had in fact left in protest:

She is understood to have stormed out of the newsroom a week and a half ago and hasn't turned up for work since.

She is said to be furious at changes to the news bulletin, which she believes undermine SBS standards.

However, continuing on a theme noted by the SMH, last night Australia's favourite televisual tabloid, A Current Affair, speculated that the changes to SBS's modus operandi were only one cause of Kostakidis' upset.

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