The loss of David Stratton and Margaret Pomeranz, presenters for 17 years of The Movie Show, will massively and justifiably reinforce that perception. Regardless of SBS's spin, the defection of Stratton and Pomeranz is the ABC's gain and SBS's very considerable loss. The pair had a sane, adult approach to the film industry, rare - except sometimes at Radio National - in Australian broadcasting.

In truth, the departures haven't come as a savage shock to some who know Stratton and Pomeranz fairly well. Neither have been desperately happy or comfortable since Shaun Brown succeeded Peter Cavanagh as head of television.

Pomeranz couldn't have put it more bluntly, without being impolite, than her remarks of April 5: 'All organisations go through change and SBS is heading in a new direction. As a passionate supporter of public broadcasting I did not feel comfortable with this new direction. As a result I felt it was time for me to make a change.'

The irony of the board/Brown structural and programming changes is that, if The Great Plan is for a bigger audience, they're simply not working. SBS, for example, has always set great store by its 'reach', a measurement of people who - though they might not watch a particular program to the end - tune to SBS for at least five minutes or so. You can do pretty well anything with figures, but sources say over the last year this reach figure has dropped catastrophically, from 5.6 million to 4.6 million a week.

'new ethos' - less documentaries, more 'entertainment', more advertising, raucous commercials, reality shows, voiceovers through the credits, brassy program promotions, marketing-driven content

Brown told someone at the station, headquartered in Artarmon (Sydney), that SBS hadn't lost TMS. It'd simply lost the incumbent presenters. That is, of course, the case. Equally, it's potentially more serious than that. Yes, new presenters can be found. But the network tradition and public broadcasting ethos embodied in Stratton and Pomeranz were symbolic, a symbolism SBS will take lightly at its own peril. Because it's extremely unlikely the broadcaster's 'new' ethos - less documentaries, more 'entertainment', more advertising, raucous commercials, reality shows, voiceovers through the credits, brassy program promotions, marketing-driven content - would survive a change of federal government. SBS still gets about 90 per cent of its funding from the public purse and is
supposed to be a public broadcaster. Malcolm Fraser didn't establish it to employ taxpayers' funds to leverage itself into the vanguard of attacking the revenues of Kerry Packer, Kerry Stokes and CanWest.

It's difficult to envision this federal administration, which appointed the present board, intervening at SBS. But Labor - whose spokesman for communications, Lindsay Tanner, has pointedly accused the Howard Government of 'stacking' SBS's board - might well get around to it. It could be done in any number of ways. Governmental interference with public broadcasting is anathema to the majority of people, but perceptions of an SBS shift downmarket might just preclude too much of a hue and cry. The end might be seen as justifying the means.

There would, for Brown, be enormous irony in political action. Brown has been there before! His lengthy pre-SBS stint as a Television NZ executive was studded with regular complaints that he was ratings-driven and prepared to forgo public broadcasting standards in order to increase audiences. His TVNZ position became untenable after stinging public criticism of the broadcaster's ethos from no less than New Zealand's Prime Minister, Helen Clark. Clark made it abundantly clear she wanted the network to return to its public broadcasting roots.

Anyway, there's a lot of staff unease at the two presenters' departure. And most of the fingers of blame are pointing, fairly or otherwise, towards Brown. People don't say he's an unpleasant or unintelligent man. But many claim, with some considerable passion, that he hasn't yet demonstrated a thorough understanding of SBS's societal or broadcasting niches.

This is a shortened version of the article in The Australian 7apr04

Stratton and Pomeranz began presenting the Movie Show 17 years ago and built it into a flagship for SBS. Pomeranz said she felt it was time to make a change and 'ABC TV offers a new and exciting challenge'.
The Australian 17may04