Australia is a multicultural nation but even it’s multicultural broadcaster fails to support the nation’s fading diverse ethnic communities. SBS radio does a wonderful job, day-time SBS Television broadcasts much loved news programs from around the world, but prime time SBS does not provide adequate multi-lingual programming. The SBS board itself has faced criticism regarding their lack of diversity so as a participant of a non-English, non-Anglo community I thought I could offer my help to fix their Prime Time television problem in a series of short articles. Here’s one idea for consideration.

Televise Multicultural Artists

Australia has hundreds of ethnic community halls that each week entertain their members with live music and dance. Friday or Saturday nights on SBS could broadcast live from either a sound stage or one of these halls to showcase music and dance from a single, or multiple regions. The show would present multi-lingual performances and could be tied together by an English host. The show would promote local ethnic performers (many of whom are volunteers), encourage greater participation, promote multi-language entertainment and could help build bridges between communities. For example the Greeks and Turks share a musical tradition and I’m inclined to think this phenomenon common around the world. ‘Stin Ygeia Mas’ is a three hour Greek Music program that could easily be replicated for a multi-lingual audience on the cheap in Australia. Pick a talented and knowledgeable presenter, enage local communities and encourage the Australian production of non-English content. Thousands of participants across Australia are already producing this content for free. SBS help them to help you!

Multicultural Festivals are Event Television

Each year dozens of communities across Australia hold festivals for thousands of participants. These events feature music, dance, food, theater, and speeches from community leaders. These festivals are bursting at the seems with culture and present a great television opportunity with cheap ready made content from communities willing to share. With a single camera and a talented presenter SBS could produce a series showcasing each of these festivals in condensed one or two hour formats. Outside of the festivities these shows would give Australia’s ethnic broadcaster the perfect opportunity to understand and explore the life and struggles of ethnic communities as well as promote participation by the wider audience. Interviews with local leaders in native language could be subtitled in English to also provide multi-language content on the cheap. In Melbourne alone the following festivals happen each year: Antipodes Greek Festival; Johnston Street Spanish Festival; Melbourne French Festival; Holland Festival of Melbourne; Tesselaar Tulip Festival; Buddha’s Day and Mutlicultural Festival; Polish Festival; Thai Culture and Food Festival; Williamstown Macedonian Festival; Turkish Pazar Festival; and, the African Music and Cultural Festival. 11 episodes based on those festivals alone of cheap, meaningful content are available for SBSTV and it’s about time they followed up and recognised these community efforts!

Document Multicultural Communities

Hundreds of thousands of Australians are involved in local ethnic communities groups. Here they maintain and create culture though song, dance, sport, political activism and in countless other unique ways. SBS has the opportunity to create a documentary series profiling these important cultural organisations… while they’re still here. Similar to how Optus Sport created the Football Belongs series. Multicultural assimilation means that this series would be of national significance. It would capture diverse stories and would encourage participation in cultural groups. It could touch on challenges including engaging young people and maintaining language which would improve Australia’s understanding of a huge and largely hidden cultural movement.

Make the most of it

The Multicultural Community in Australia is diverse and vibrant, but it cannot be taken for granted. SBS has a great prime time television platform which would promote multiculturalism, and the entertainment value of these diverse stories would be celebrated by wider Australia.

Note: This piece was reworked in August 2023.