Jozef Drewniak |
In 2015 SBS is celebrating the 40th anniversary of SBS Radio, and 40 years as the voice of multicultural Australia.
Established as Radio 2EA and 3EA in Sydney and Melbourne respectively in June 1975 and starting as a trial service tasked with informing Australia’s rapidly growing migrant population about the Governments new healthcare scheme, SBS Radio has since developed into the world’s largest multicultural media organisation with 74 language programs and four music channels producing over 265 hours of original, Australian focused news and information every week. SBS Radio Polish was one of the first of those languages, first going to air in 1975, when many Poles were commemorating the first 25 years of their life in Australia.
The first Polish voice they heard on air was Mr Josef Drewniak, the former opera singer who decided to be a voice of the Poles and for the Poles, continuing in that role with SBS for the next 14 years.
As current SBS Radio Polish Executive Producer Anna Sadurska said: “For those who arrived in the 1950s, hearing a Polish voice on air was tremendous and a very moving experience, hearing the language of their lost motherland. Then, from the beginning of the 1980s, the program of SBS was the voice of freedom and one of the only sources of objective, uncensored information about the situation in their old country”.
“We remain a radio that respects our audience giving them comprehensive information and imparting values which are those of SBS as a whole: truth fairness, impartiality and respect to our listeners. We are convinced that Polish program of SBS links the Polish diaspora beyond the boundaries. In our meetings with our listeners, in the feedback which we get, we believe that we are as important to them as our predecessors were forty years ago”.
On the anniversary SBS Managing Director, Michael Ebeid said: “SBS Radio has had a significant impact on the lives of so many people in the last 40 years, including my own parents who I remember listening to SBS Radio, when I was young. For them, as with many migrants, SBS was a trusted place where they could get impartial news and information in a language they were more familiar with, helping them participate in Australian society”. “We are still that trusted voice for the more than four million Australians who speak a language other than English at home. With that figure now double what it was 40 years ago; there is a greater need today for SBS’s services than ever before, which will only increase as Australia continues to grow in cultural complexity” said Mr Ebeid.
In the 90ties: Ernestyna with Campuchean and Vietnamese broadcasters and a guest from Argentina |
To mark the anniversary, SBS Radio are celebrating 40 years of a multicultural Australia with specialised content looking back on the news that shaped Australia and the world over the last 40 years. We are also asking all Australians to tell us what their hopes, dreams, aspirations or fears for Australia are in the next 40 years via the #in40years hashtag on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram or online at sbs.com.au/40years
Enter for your chance to win a $5000 travel voucher from Flight Centre!
For further information, please contact Lauren Gallagher: lauren.gallagher@sbs.com.au
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