Special Broadcasting Service

The Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) is an Australian hybrid-funded public service broadcaster. About 80 percent of funding for the company is derived from tax revenue. SBS operates six TV channels (SBS, SBS Viceland, SBS World Movies, SBS Food, NITV and SBS WorldWatch) and seven radio networks (SBS Radios 1, 2 and 3, Arabic24, SBS Chill, SBS South Asian and SBS PopAsia). SBS is also home to SBS On Demand video streaming service.

The stated purpose of SBS is "to provide multilingual and multicultural radio and television services that inform, educate and entertain all Australians and, in doing so, reflect Australia's multicultural society". SBS is one of five main free-to-air networks in Australia.

SBS formally came into existence in 1975 as a radio network. Full-time transmission began on a new television channel in 1980. In-show advertising commenced in 2006. Commercial breaks are set at five minutes per hour. SBS's most successful imported television series is South Park.

As a result of extensive post-World War II immigration to Australia and the end of the White Australia Policy, the federal government began to consider the need for "ethnic broadcasting" – programming targeted at ethnic minorities and mostly delivered in languages other than English. Until 1970, radio stations were prevented by law from broadcasting in foreign languages for more than 2.5 hours per week. On 9 June 1975, at the behest of Minister for Immigration Al Grassby, two "experimental" radio stations began broadcasting: 2EA in Sydney and 3EA in Melbourne (EA stood for "Ethnic Australia"), partly to publicise the Whitlam government's social policy changes to ethnic communities. In March 1976, the Fraser government established the Consultative Committee on Ethnic Broadcasting, followed by the National Ethnic Broadcasting Advisory Council in January 1977. Initially, it was considered feasible for ethnic broadcasting to be delivered by the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC); however, this plan was abandoned in mid-1977.

In October 1977, the government announced the creation of SBS as a new independent statutory authority for ethnic broadcasting. This was achieved as a result of an amendment to the Broadcasting Act 1942. SBS formally came into existence on 1 January 1978. The inaugural Chair of SBS was Grisha Sklovsky, and the inaugural executive director was Ronald Fowell. The service was initially a radio network, and had oversight only of the two existing stations 2EA and 3EA. It was always intended that it would be enlarged, but this process was controversial – the Federation of Australian Commercial Television Stations wanted the television functions to be controlled by the ABC.

In March 1979, the government set up the Ethnic Television Review Panel, which recommended that SBS expand multilingual services into television. SBS TV began test transmissions in April 1979 when it showed various foreign language programs on ABV-2 Melbourne and ABN-2 Sydney on Sunday mornings. Full-time transmission began on a new television channel at 6:30 pm on 24 October 1980 (United Nations Day). The first program shown was a documentary entitled Who Are We?, which was hosted by veteran news presenter Peter Luck. At the time, SBS was broadcasting on UHF Channel 28 and VHF Channel 0 (pronounced as "oh" and not "zero"), with a planned discontinuation of the latter at some time in the future. Bruce Gyngell, who introduced television to Australia in 1956, was given the task of introducing the first batch of programs on the new station.

SBS programming content was initially imported from the suppliers in the countries-of-origin of Australia's major migrant communities and then subtitled into English.

In October–November 1983, the service expanded to service the centres of Canberra, Cooma and Goulburn, subsequently changing its name to Network 0–28. Its new slogan was the eventual long-running "Bringing the World Back Home". The network changed its name to simply SBS in February 1985 and soon began daytime transmissions. SBS also expanded to the cities of Brisbane, Adelaide, Newcastle, Wollongong and the Gold Coast in June of that year.