Good idea .... or .... go for a third/shared broadcast channel for news, current affairs, schools and "minor" sports. [The buyout of Channel Ten - should it fall victim to the financial meltdown - by the government might be the way to go].

That won’t happen unless we get a clean sweep of the ABC and SBS Boards though.

Digital? That’s fine for high-population areas …. but what about the Other Australia ….

I would personally suppose moving the news programmes to a digital channel and put more general-interest foreign-language programmes and movies on in the morning. I would also go 24/7 with programming instead of closing for most of the overnight.

Way back in the bad old colonial days, there used to be a sign outside a
gentlemen’s club in Shanghai “No Dogs or Chinese Allowed” [or words to that
effect]

Don’t try to tell me that the pompous wording of selection criteria for ABC and
SBS Board members isn’t a present-day version of that sign. “No Bogans
Allowed”. On the surface, it might seem that selection of Board members on the
basis of merit, excellence, eminence, high-level executive involvement with
the industry and so forth would be superior to appointment on the basis of
political reliability …. but I have very grave doubts indeed about that.
Selecting from either tiny stagnant, fetid pool would be equally bad – all we
would get from either would be the sorts of boofheads who gave us such
diverse wonders as the Aboriginal assimilation policy, the retention of the
Imperial flag, the defence procurement mess and all the other idiotic
decisions-by-our-betters.

We need innovative, responsive and completely new Boards for ABC and SBS. We
need Boards made up of both broadcasting and arts industry specialists AND of
ordinary intelligent Australians from throughout the entire country. Why not
select the community members of each Board by a lottery using the electoral
rolls? We couldn’t help but get a better Boards than through a
woolly-headed “selection”[wtf?] process.
….

Guido [6]:
You are right about SBS turning into ABC-3. Take news for instance: one
half-hour a week [Chile’s excellent “Esta Semana"] from the entire continent
of South America; absolutely nothing from the entire continent of Africa – not
even from our friends in the Republic of South Africa; nothing at all from our
very important neighbour, India. The usual p.w. excuse for this neglect is
to waffle-on about which news services should be dumped to make room for them
…. instead of trying more intelligent programming so that none of the present news serices are dumped. Time for a brand new Board at SBS.

I suppose a little bit of evidence for your comments @8 is out of the question Razor?

From my observation both organisations fall over backwards to appease their right wing critics. Even to the point of running opposition and “Australian” talking points as if they were the truth revealed. Think Fran Kelly and her recent efforts as just one example.

In this information age with robust private free to air radio and TV, Pay TV, the Internet and multiple forms of print media, having a government funded broadcaster is an anachronism and therefore a huge waste of money. I can think of many better ways to spend the almost $1 Billion anually. Returning the money to taxpayers to spend on their own choice of media to start with.