SBS Viceland will still have more local content per week than ABC2: Marc Fennell rejects SBS-Vice criticism
SBS2’s The Feed host Mark Fennell has fired back at criticism over the channel’s partnership with US youth publisher Vice Media, arguing that thanks to the presence of his daily show in the lineup, SBS Viceland will still have “more first-run, live, original primetime Australian content per week than ABC2 has ever had per week”.
Fennell’s comments, published to his personal website, follow on from a report by The Australian which saw former ABC chairman Maurice Newman slam the deal, saying it showed the SBS had “run out reasons to exist” and meant the broadcaster was no longer being “true to their charter”.
Newman’s comments were echoed by David Hill, ABC managing director from 1987-95, who told The Australian: “Quite aside from the spiciness of the content, why would they get into such a specialist, commercial channel? It doesn’t make sense to me.
I’m certainly looking forward to Viceland, their Docos look great, a lot more interesting than Cooking and Reno shows
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would it not also follow that armed citizen vigilantes also be required to show proof of liability insurance
Good move SBS, at last a FTA channel with strong under 30 (male in particular), gravitas, and with lower commercial content to improve audience engagement ans stickiness. Without government subsidy the mainstream commercials would probably find it too much of a stretch to dedicate a channel for this kind of content. Its a hard to reach demo that advertisers need to reach.