I’ve only just seen this story and I’m horrified. There’s been a fair bit of leaked stuff in Crikey this year about her dissatisfaction with both the direction of the news and the star thing with Stan.
“Management assured her that they wouldn’t be running a news show where the man does the hard news and the woman does the soft stuff,” said one former colleague, who asked not to be named.
“But instead she feels it’s not even The Stan and Mary Show – it’s The Stan Grant Show. She’s personally offended by the money-grubbing commercialisation of the show, and feels management are abandoning the kind of principles with which SBS was set up, and she personally helped devise.”
Good luck Mary, you did the right thing, leaving that travesty which was once the best 1/2 hour news on (OZ)TV.
“Expanding” it to an hour for all those ads really meant eviscerating its worthwhile content.
And has anyone noticed a similar dumbing down of content on the 7pm ABC news? Apart from the weather, there’s no reason to watch it, just wait for the 7.30 Report or Lateline.
Good on you, Mary. Class act. They’ve made SBS news unwatchable. It’s a great loss. They’ll be congratulating themselves. (Dateline will be next.)
Hopefully Australian culture will return to normal under Rudd.
She is a great lady. Fought an unequal fight bravely for some time. Why aren’t her work colleagues backing her?
Re WBB and Dateline, that started a few months ago when they sacked the show’s producer and imported Peter Charley of Lateline aboriginal affairs Brough beatups notoriety.
The rot set in with that pitiful tabloid smear against Dr Haneef after he got back to India. The REAL Dateline would have disdained such an obvious set-up with a two hundred-foot barge-pole…
Stop press.
Just caught today’s “Australian”, with Amanda Meade’s report, accompanied by a photo of a defiant, feisty Kostakidis.
We learn “the heart of SBS” has “walked away from a distinguished twenty year career” since August tenth, having been “humiliated”, most recently for refusing to read a “trivialised” script that “humiliated the elderly”.
The problem appears to stem from a comprehensive reneging on an agreement in February by management who you would expect to be responsible for this sort of treachery: Shaun Brown and Paul Cutler. Plus cold shouldering from the teacher’s pet and annointed company poodle, scabby Stan Grant..
BTW, WBB.
Cutler was the apparent assassin responsible for the sacking of the Dateline producer in the incident the writer mentioned in the earlier post.
We also learn that SBS news ratings have plummeted approx. 40,000 from 230,000 last year.
No wonder, given the propagandised treatment now unreliable news receives, much in similar vein to the also dumbed down ABC news.
Can’t stand Stan Grant, never could. He is way out of his depth with serious news stories and his interviews make me squirm with embarrassment. He seems to think that constant rude interjections, stammering out his list of questions regardless of responses, and making it clear he does not like the “wrong” answers, is the way to go.
I have watched him a number of times stop a person finishing a very interesting sentence, and lose the entire news value of the interview because his brain was not connected and he was listening only to the sound of his own voice.
I hate seeing the lovely Mary sidelined in the way she has been. She is one of the best news readers in the country, and if she leaves, then I hope it is only temporary until the ratings convince the knuckleheads in charge that they have ruined a once great news half hour.
“I’ve only just seen this story and I’m horrified”
Kim, you need to read the comments from Road To Surfdom more…
check out:
http://www.roadtosurfdom.com/2007/08/20/and-you-thought-incentivation-was-bad/#comments
Comment # 40
…still, i imagine you get pretty busy here…just joshin’
August 21st, 2007 at 6:18 pm
The commercial interests & Coalition supporters are taking over SBS & the ABC as insidiously as cancer.
It was ridiculous making Stan Grant the prime newsreader on SBS. He has no credibility with the people who watch SBS, while his natural audience, those people who used to watch him on Today Tonight, are never going to watch SBS.
What has happened to SBS beggars belief. If you set out to deliberately wreck SBS, you’d manage the station exactly as it has been managed.
Kostakidis will hopefully get a job at a serious broadcaster.
…ditto all the above. Mary was THE class act of Australian evening news broadcasting. Adding a male (Stan or anyone) was completely unnecessary and I don’t understand the Australian TV media’s managers’ obsession with a requiring a “leading male” to add credibility. It’s wrong and it’s a joke. SBS World News as a 30-minute programme slotted nicely between the trashy local commercials and ABC News. Mary dealt with the world news that mattered articulately and professionally in a way the commercials never dared to.
I hope Mary gets all she thoroughly deserves and that SBS management get slowly stewed in their myopic juices.
Its not just SBS News. Its everything about SBS. The now endless commercials, the stupid decision years ago to end the 9.30 movies and put on a 9.30 news which was little more than a repeat of the 6.30 news, the movies being on far too late to watch, (a bit like Torchwood on 10), the endlese, endless boring sport, the endless repeats of Queer as Folk, the dropping of the Movie Show, etc etc. SBS has been going to the dogs for years now.
What’s currently happening to the News is part of an overall pattern of stupid managerial dercisions that can only turn away an audience.
You mean she’ll have to leave Australia?
and have you noticed on the ABC & SBS that every time they discuss a story emanating from the Murdoch Press they feel compelled to show a hand or such turning the pages of a real newspaper starting w/ the front page & name of paper as obvious as day? I think we know who has got his foot in the door of our publicly funded stations…or at least some of his minions.
“You mean she’ll have to leave Australia?”
Yes.
And how we usually are treated to a News Ltd or Sky News political
hackcorrespondent on mornings in Sydney ABC radio. I don’t know if it’s done in other states, if so then it must be a general policy.Why don’t they just outsource the whole news department and be done with it?
I’m noticing the same Adrian.
I reckon they’re taking the ABC & SBS down the road of towards a 24 hour BBC World News…all those ads suckin’ up to Corporate Big Wigs, investors, yacht & golf enthusiasts, Dubai lovers…it’s enuff to make ya puke.
Remember how the sbs commercial-isation was prefigured by a break in the news (still half) hour where they summed up the “top stories”. When ads started to run, that was where they were inserted. I’ve been really suspicious about what’s in train for the ABC since they started doing the same thing on the 7pm news.
me too Kim, Ive long believed that SBS is being wound down and will be eventually folded into a digital station on the ABC. The inclusion of ads on one digital channel opens up the way for the ABC to be commercialised. But hey, I could be being dramatic.
did i lose my comment? Geez.
mee too Kim, I said. I have long believed that the dismantling of SBS will result in it eventually being rolled into a digital channel on the ABC as a minor channel in a suite. That will a) get rid of the visible face of multiculturalism on TV and b) open up the way for ads on the ABC main channel. But that could be dramatics on my part. I dont trust SBS management.
Is there a marginal seat somewhere that St Mary can run for? What is happening in Costello’s seat?
Sorry, casey, the spaminator is having an active morning gobbling up genuine comments.
I am not sure if this is appropriate for this site or not, but I just rang SBS public relations to register my disappointment about the new news format and Mary’s treatment, and the nice man took my comments word for word and said that they go straight to the Director of News.
http://www20.sbs.com.au/sbscorporate/index.php?id=369
Telephone:
SBS Public Relations
1800500727 (Toll free)
(02) 94302828 (Sydney)
Now you’re talking, Peter J. Nicol. Mary’d be a shoo-in in Higgins. She’d have the ticker too.
Kostakidis has engaged Julian Burnside QC to represent herin her breach of contract claim against SBS.
She mush have a good case. You don’t hire Burnside unless you think the other side is going to end up paying your costs.
I am watching less and less of SBS these days, that goes
for it’s cousin the ABC also. Stan whatsisname totally put me off the best newscast in Oz. Whoever made the decision to change the SBS newscast at 6.30 must have a
hidden agenda, (probably involving $’s), but they certainly don’t have SBS’s original brief at heart.
One question for Silkworm. How will a change in Fed. Govt help the SBS programming to get some semblance of what
we had come to love and appreciate?
You’re a brave lady Mary Kostakidis.
Back to the library, and RN.
Lesley Archer NSW
“You don’t hire Burnside unless you think the other side is going to end up paying your costs.”
Unless he’s doing it pro bono of course, which wouldn’t surprise me.
Good stuff Peter…I commend you on your passion…i sent this email to SBS last year, i imagine many others did too during the Codes Review period…not sure it had much impact going by the changes we’ve seen:
To Codes Review SBS, 16th Aug. 06:
Dear SBS management,
My wife & I are outraged that SBS is being forced by the Federal Gov’t. & the Board to insert ads during news & current affairs programmes such as DATELINE.
This will disrupt flow, diminish the gravitas of news &/or the message/issue…& may lead to the diminishment of alternative views to mainstream thinking due to the reliance of SBS on the revenue stemming from Corporate advertisers & the intrusive policies of some via their lobby groups etc.
As SBS is a publicly funded channel w/ a charter that provides it w/ the incentive to express the views & explore issues & culture of the diverse expanse of the Australian population, I fail to see how the new dictates will not hinder said goal…& limit expression.
This policy must be rethought or scrapped if SBS is to continue to develop programming that represents the diverse views of the Australian community, particularly those of us who are in the minority due to ethnicity, lifestyle, race, gender or choice.
As taxpayers we demand to be heard. Taxation w/ representation is the go in an egalitarian society…the very environment under which SBS was created…lest some in your organization forget.
SBS often assists in representing our alternative & valid views….though we would love to see a few vegetarian related shows.
Consequently, we are outraged at the perceived bullying by Federal Government on this issue…& the authoritarian attitudes of some members of the SBS board. In our honest opinion, these Corporate bureaucrats intend to construct a new SBS, one of homogeneity that is uncritical of Right-Wing, rampant Capitalist ideas.
This policy of ad insertion is nothing but another step in the incremental road to undermining all that made SBS great & diverse. This is not on.
——–
He might well be, FDB, but you can be sure that SBS will have someone equally high priced if it goes to court and he’ll be charging in full. If Kosta loses, she’ll be out of pocket a-plenty.
Which makes me think Kosta has an open and shut case.
I look forward to seeing her on the BBC World Service.
By restacking the board. The ebb and flow of democracy.
“How will a change in Fed. Govt help the SBS programming to get some semblance of what we had come to love and appreciate?”
Every time there is a change in govt, the party in power starts stacking the publc broadcasters’ boards with the people who hire the management who do their ideological bidding. Thats why Keith Windschuttle is on the board at the ABC and Pearson is on the board at SBS. A change to labor should theoretically see an end to the reign of shaun brown who would have been hired to do change the vision of SBS to a white mainstream commercial one. However, Labor of today is not the Labor of the years when SBS was set up…
“By restacking the board”
The first to get the heave-ho should be Christopher Pearson, whose term conveniently comes up for renewal in October, when the election campaign should be on, and the government will be unable to make appointments.
Some would say it’s small thing, but the SBS web site is sbs.com.au. The “.com” instead of “.org” or “.net” says a lot about the organisation and its culture under its current regime.
Lesley Archer: I think it is well known that there was a big switch-off for Toyota World Sport, so the news hour was supposed to help fix that.
It is being reported today that the news hour is 38,000 viewers down, but without knowing what is happening in the 7.00 slot previously occupied by TWS then we don’t know if this has been good or not for net ratings over both timeslots.
In any case, the news hour is bloody awful, and Stan Grant is inappropriate for SBS at this stage in his career. I note with interest that an ex-60minuter is doing ok on ABC with Talking Point.
Anyway, SBS have now lost Margaret and David, and St Mary! Getting fewer and fewer reasons to stick with the channel.
There is now a Facebook group:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=4613422555
I am not surprised to hear this – it represents the continued decline of a once great broadcaster. If anyone has experienced trying to protest to SBS about their advert policy, you would know that this place has become a managerial fortress, and you can see all the talent leaving out the back door so that it will be nothing more than a shell in 5 years.
Shaun Brown as been an absolute disaster a Director, and the Board and Chair should be ashamed of themselves for presiding over such a decline in quality, and the subsequent crash in audience share.
Management is not interested at all in the views of their viewers so I hope that Mary K can sue the pants of them. This might bring the place to its senses and get rid of the duds running the place and return SBS to its role as a unique, innovative and interesting boroadcaster.
“Why aren’t her work colleagues backing her?”
There is no one left to back her. The old regime is gone. Phil Martin (head of news) has gone (under interesting circumstances himself). Rod Webb (head of programming) has gone. Peter Cavanagh (head of tv) has gone. John Stahel, Head of Presentation – gone. Quang Luu (head of radio) – gone. It goes on. Every single head of department has gone. Question is: why didnt they support each other when Brown was picking them off one by one. All it takes to get rid of SBS is to get rid of the staff who are loyal to the idea of SBS. After that you can change it so much, you realise one day there is no good reason for the Special Broadcasting Service to exist at all when its not special anymore and has become like every other commercial network.
I suspect it the generally diagnosed commercialization of SBS (& the ABC) & the increasing silliness of commercial media is part of their panic at responding to a shifting world of media use. Where the net offers instant access, instant commentary, & a plethora of choice to suit or enrage one’s prejudices.
Curiously they seem to be convinced that a blandness meant to appeal to all is the way forward, rather than cultivating a niche, (that which Kostakidis personified – a news & analysis broadcast with gravitas), rather than using the net to build their audience with podcasting, streaming etc etc. But no, we are reduced to ads for roofing tiles & greenhouse emitting internal combustion engines & a poorly directed version of Fox News.
Vale Ms Kostakidis – best to leave now before Mr Milne or Mr Pearson or even the unspeakably silly Mr Jones joins the set as a commentator…
One of the brain-dead bean-counter (‘scuz tautology)arguments for ads on ABC (and prev. SBS)is that the AB demographic would have the top clients slavering.
The obvious reply about paying pipers cut no ice. The SBS ads. used to be hi-quality and occasionally even fun but now they could, probably do, run on 7,9 & 10.
In Germany & Holland, ads are restricted to between the shows (and only after 7pm), as was first the case at SBS. That was actually one of the ‘reasons’ proffered by the new regime, that people used that break period to make tea, go to the toilet, etc.
Can’t be having that, so better just to lose the very audience that originally made it so attractive to advertisers.
So heartening to have found this site. I agree with all your comments about the dehumanising corporatisation of SBS and the departure of Mary Kostakidis. I’m sure I am not the only one to have seen this happen in other organisations when the soulless corporate crew move in. Nothing but blind destructiveness as they rip the heart out until everything good about the place is gone.
And I miss Damien Lovelock from The World Game too.
Not exactly the best site, but if you’re interested in
taking some radical actionsigning an online petition:… then I’ll paste you a link!
The beginning of the end came when SBS started commercials. It may still be the best TV news in Australia but for how long? I heard of Mary’s decision with alarm for the future of SBS as a whole & the news in particular. More power to you Mary, perhaps the ABC will be able to see an opportunity for one of the finest journalists in Australia.
Maybe the Chaser can send ‘Stiff and Stiffer’ around to a few Carla Zampatti stores.
Don’t forget Shaun Brown was tried and then got rid of very hastily indeed, by a contemptuous Helen Clark back in New Zealand ( an appointee of a previous government there? ). It utterly stunned local media watchers that SBS would then hire such a previously disruptive influence, here.
What has been the excuse for the decline of fact-based public broadcasting in Australia, though?
Lack of money, same as blackfella affairs, health, education etc. Yet, every election, Costello trots out a surplus gained from starving the states of adequate funds, for election pork barrelling and tax cuts bribation of the upper mortgage belt.
Why is this PARTICULAR government so anti, objectivity-based public media ?
Amphibious [at 12:33am]:
Spot on!
And ABC has resumed its former status as “Menzies’ Mouthpiece”: out of touch with its viewers/listener and operated by a bunch of timid, pro-Coalition sychophants.
Kim:
It’s not only Mary Kostakidis who has taken a walk. This one humble member of the audience has taken a walk too …. right away from Australian TV, especially commercial TV – and these days, that includes SBS. The TV set is still there – an essential device for watching videos, DVDs and VCDs – but now I rarely watch television. What is in my bookcase or on the internet is now far more intersting and useful to me than what is spewed out of television, whether on broadcast-TV or pay-TV.
What the nong-nongs running the TV networks have forgotten is that the audience is a gathering of customers; when they try to off-load shoddy goods onto us, we are quite entitled to turn our backs on them and walk straight out of their shop …. and sooner or later advertisers/sponsors too will see what is happenng and take their money elsewhere.
SBS under Shaun Brown has lost the plot. He was axed from TVNZ by Helen Clark. He is also responsible for Margaret and David leaving SBS and moving to the ABC. I also suggest people take a closer look at Programming Director Matt Campbell. His CV is rather ambiguous and suggests he has very little programming experience – it has also been noted by many at SBS that Matt likes to joke that his girl-friend influences his decisions. Sadly, many think it is true. Nice to see that our tax dollars are being well spent.
Perhaps a save our SBS campaign is in order?
Thanks FDB for the link to the petition which I have signed, along with emailing SBS with a formal complaint, and emailing Senators Conroy and Coonan. “They’ll get used to it” is what the corporatists say but we have a voice – so let’s use it. The newsreader sacked by Shaun Brown in NZ was eventually reinstated after the outcry there, except our PM won’t be doing a Helen Clark – he is complicit in all this.
Sure you can turn off the TV but this is about more than a TV station. Is this what we really want in our society? Do we want to live in a conformist commercial world forever chasing the dollar – or an enriched, varied society that can think, imagine and exchange ideas?
There is this piece in the Oz media section today by Mark Day.
Uh-huh
Phil – Mark Day was quoting Shaun Brown who also said he was “puzzled” by Mary Kostakidis’s actions.
Well, he would say that wouldn’t he?
Quentin Dempster has written an excellent peice in the Media section today: Fourth commercial network?
Thanks for the petition link – duly signed.
I think the degradation to the quality of the SBS news started before the 1-hour format, but with the introduction of the ads, Stan Grant and the extended format, the quality plummeted further. With Mary now leaving (and how long before the other respected presenters, such as Lee-Lin follow suit?), the conversion of the once flagship of Australian TV news has been reduced to just another tabloid commercial TV bulletin.
Dissatisfaction both inside and outside the ABC at Jonathon Shier’s similar approach at the ABC eventually forced his resignation. I hope the same happens with Shaun Brown before too long.
Good on Mary for not lying down on this! I do not think it is possible to return to public broadcasting once you have prostitued yourself to sell margarine and KFC, whether on 60 Minutes, ACA TDT, etc. I cannot watch geoff McMullen or Stan Grant on the ABC or SBS. I always expect Grant to start running down some tawdry back-alley, the hand-held camera jerking, with him yelling out “Sir, excuse me, why won’t you talk to the pensioners whose milk you’ve been stealing front their front doorsteps!”
Mary is a class act and a national treasure. Grant dilutes not only the journalistic credibility, he also sound well, dumb. Ads and public broadcasting do not mix
Anton is on the news tonight rather than Stan Grant … ? (Mind you, I haven’t watched SBS News for ages, as it was still only about half an hour long without the ads!)
Well said, Jack!
Leave the rubbish on the commercials. No one wants to take Big Brother away from the zoobs if they CANT think.
But surely, ONE little corner for the rest of us, for real events and issues. You never know, if enough of us stick with reality, we may be one day able to warn the rest of a virtual Pearl Harbour eventuating and pay broadsheet media’s way handsomely ( if the tiny pittance of money expended for public media is ALL that worries the miserable bastards ) as well saving,if not the rest at least ourselves.
By analogy, think of the fall of Troy. If just ONE person had stayed alert instead of celebrating, after they hauled the wooden horse in thinking the Greeks had gone, a whole civilisation might have been saved!
Ps, love Lucy and others observations. Anton, Li Lin, Amrita and rest, frowns aplenty burnt into furrowing brows, must be being payed a fortune in double time to be dragged in from time off to cover for Mary and the curiously absent invisible Stan.
Shame. Mary is much too good for the reconstituted (butchered) SBS
As an ex-long-term SBS employee I can’t begin to tell you how pleased I am to see so much support for the unique, one-time, pioneer in broadcasting. This station helped so many people adjust to life in this nation of many nations of ours and it helped abolish the “them and us” mentality and made it acceptable to have names of more than one or two syllables and with lots of vowels, or indeed, no vowels. We learnt about other people, their customs and beliefs through the incredible foreign movies and series SBS used to screen with their world-renowned subtitles and now the subtitling unit is being decimated because there is not enough work in Spanish, Greek, Italian and Polish and that’s just for starters. How sad is that? Now as far as Mary Kostakidis leaving SBS goes, I’m pretty sure it had very little to do with Stan Grant and everything to do with tbe commercialisation of the channel and the fact that SBS news resorted to having Paris Hilton as the lead story for the evening bulletin!!! As passionate as I am about SBS, sadly, I no longer see it fulfilling its role as a public broadcaster, nor serving any useful purpose anymore… Dateline has gone all wishy-washy, the news is showing the same nonsense as the commercials, the Movie Show, gone, the little feedback gem, Hotline, abolished, foreign films – once in a blue moonand very late at night and the only saving grace, as I see it, are the series Inspector Rex and the The Eagle. So while I adored SBS of old, I believe current management has done it irreparable damage and it will be near impossible to save it. Unless… all you wonderful articulate, intelligent supporters keep up all your good work.
Lizzy:
How true. It’s about propping up those three tired old dinosaurs by getting rid of what was an increasingly attractive rival. Ever since SBS broadcast the American documentary series “The Civil War” almost a generation ago, the three “commercial” channels have been forced to take SBS seriously.
So what do you call the process of destroying a world leader in television broadcasting and of getting rid of its most capable personnel? Corporate socialism? Market share for dullards? Government welfare for TV companies that can’t cope with a little bit of competition?
Big Momma:
Don’t give up hope.