sbs
George Negus Contemplates Life As A Grey Nomad
10:44AM Jess McGuire | Well, George Negus isn’t exactly planning on packing up a caravan and travelling around this big old country of ours, but he is beginning to consider winding down his workload in anticipation of old age, or something.
As he marks a milestone of 40 years in the media, veteran Australian journalist George Negus says he’ll consider winding down “in the next few years”.
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Top Gear Australia Presenter Returning To The UK; Jazz Musician James Morrison Will Be Bringing His Best Dad Jokes To The Team
11:30AM Jess McGuire | Perhaps Top Gear Australia host Charlie Cox was somewhat disappointed with the response from viewers to the Antipodean remake of the beloved British car show, or maybe – as he claims – he genuinely has too many work commitments in London. Whatever. Either way, he’s leaving the show!
Cox, who presented the first series with Steve Pizzati and Warren Brown, said he couldn’t give enough time to the show due to business commitments.
“My time on Top Gear Australia was very special and it was a fantastic opportunity to be part of launching an extraordinary series,” Cox said. “Sadly, though, I’ve lived in the UK for the past 19 years and I’m not able to give the time I want to series two.
And what can we expect from replacement James Morrison then? More » Top Gear Australia Angers Car Companies
10:45AM Jess McGuire | The folks at SBS’s Top Gear are apparently in trouble with some big name car companies, with the Herald Sun reporting that the program caused over $200,000 worth of damage to vehicles which appeared in the first series of the show. Now that’s some good driving!
Filming of the Australian series of Top Gear has turned into a demolition derby with a repair bill close to $200,000. Eager driving and wild stunts have left a trail of destruction behind the Top Gear team that goes beyond the expected bill for bald tyres from slides and burnouts.
Luxury cars have needed total resprays because of flying stones, and lesser brands have reported damage from silly stunts created for the SBS TV series, which is unofficially confirmed for a second series in Australia in 2009.
More » Top Gear Australia Perhaps Misguided In Hoping Being The Cause Of A Traffic Jam Will Lead To Even More Viewers
10:33AM Jess McGuire | I was reading the letters published in yesterday’s Green Guide in The Age, and there seemed to be an overwhelming sense of disappointment over the Australian remake of the popular British program Top Gear. Having not seen much of the original show and not seeing any of Top Gear Australia, I’m in no position to judge (but hey, you are! Did you like it? Hate it? Let us know!), but I am fairly certain that bringing havoc to Melbourne’s roads probably isn’t the best way to win over potential viewers.
The boys from Top Gear Australia took to the swank streets of Melbourne yesterday morning for a spin in a tractor. Hosts Steve Pizzati and Warren Brown trundled along Chapel Street and Toorak Road to a chorus of honking horns from angry motorists banked up behind their $200,000 slow-moving farm machine.
Again, I don’t watch either version of the program, so I cannot be sure if it is typical motoring show behaviour to hammer home the important concept that farm machines do not go as fast as normal automobiles and have no place on public roads.
And hey, what do Green Guide letter writers know anyway, other than how to sook? Because the ratings for the launch of Top Gear Australia were top gear indeed. More » 
Sneak Peek- Top Gear Australia
5:13PM Kym Weathersten | We’re on the home straight (sorry couldn’t resist). With just 3 sleeps to go until Top Gear Australia graces our screens, another sneak peek has hit You Tube. If the preview is any indication, the local version of the popular UK program should make for entertaining viewing.
More » Australia Uninhabited Mystery Solved – Turns Out The Fruit Juice Was SBS!
1:53PM Jess McGuire | You cheeky public broadcasting bastards.
We’ve been following the story of The Australia Uninhabited video mystery quite closely here at Defamer Australia (see here, here, here, and here). And now, at last, we finally have some answers. It was a canny ruse to promote a new SBS show!
A stunt promising free land in Australia to British citizens has created intrigue on both sides of the world. A mobile billboard, describing Australia as “uninhabited” with “free land for the taking”, was paraded around major landmarks in London, sparking interest and debate.
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Sbs Too Sexy For This Classification? That’s Unpossible!
4:36PM Clem Bastow | 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! More » Pomeranz Takes A Swipe At SBS Management
2:14PM Jess McGuire | 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. More » 
Mary, You (Possibly Shouldn’t) Let Them Make You Mad
9:51AM Clem Bastow | 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. More » 