OUR MISSION STATEMENT

SBS, through its charter, educates, informs and entertains. SBS want to be different and we challenge Australian producers to collaborate with us to bring innovative and exciting ideas that work for our schedule - while pushing the creative boundaries.

Accordingly, SBS Commissioned Content will:

1. Take the SBS audience to a place in their community where they don’t usually go.
2. Present the views of and engage the contemporary, culturally diverse Australian audience.
3. Be demonstrably pioneering and different to any other Australian network.
4. Be relevant, agenda setting and cause public debate.
5. Must have potential for other platforms - thought about from day one of development, offering new ways of involving our audience.
6. Foster and encourage new talent - on screen and behind the scenes.
7. Take risks, offer alternative voices and formats.

WHAT STORIES DO WE WANT - IN 2011 AND BEYOND?

SBS commissions cutting edge, entertaining and exciting drama, comedy, documentary, factual and factual entertainment programming from Australian production companies for broadcast on SBS TV and Online.

Comedy
SBS Comedy will showcase bold and distinctive breakout ideas, new and provocative talent, using interesting and innovative comedy vehicles. We’ve been accused of a lot of things over the years, but never of being dull or predictable. From scripted comedy to improvisation to satire, it will find a home on SBS. We particularly invite multicultural ideas. We look for ideas that are around 8 episodes per series. We’re particularly interested in comedy with a sociological /political bent.

Drama
We are looking for a very specific kind of drama at present. Fact Based contemporary series. It can either be fact based or inspired by real events. The idea needs to be contemporary, provocative, unique. And, of course have a multicultural bent to it. We want these dramas to spur discussion and debate. The series needs to have a big idea, a big sweep to it. Fearless. We imagine each series to be 3-4 hours long.

Entertainment/Factual Entertainment
The current SBS Entertainment/Factual Entertainment commissioned slate includes Letters and Numbers, RocKwiz, Eurovision and Global Village. Other recent programs have included Behind the Front Door, a factual entertainment series where people discover remarkable stories about their neighbours, Sex: An Unnatural History marking 50 years of the sexual revolution in Australia and murundak: songs of freedom a feature length documentary following The Black Arm Band, composed of many Australia’s finest indigenous performers, as they tour Australia. It’s an exciting mix of programs across the schedule.

We are committed to a number of on-going shows, so there are very limited opportunities for new commissions at present. Consequently ideas and formats need to be extremely strong to be considered.

We want programs to have a distinctive SBS flavour, which means they should feel contemporary and be reflective of modern, multicultural Australia. If they are focused on talent we want to know who that talent is and to be sure you have them onboard. They should be smart and content rich. We prefer the possibility of returning series and runs between 6 and 12 episodes.

We are not looking for:

• Copycat programs
• Car shows
• Series featuring people on a’ journey of discovery’.
• Mates travelling the world to have amazing experiences
• Youth programs

Food and Leisure
At SBS Food we’re not looking for competitive cooking programs or slapstick cooking shows. Food programs for real “foodies” such as Food Safari, Luke Nguyen’s Vietnam, Gourmet Farmer and My Sri Lanka with Peter Kuruvita is what we’re interested in. Each of these programs celebrates food, but equally, the people behind growing, supplying and preparing the finest and freshest products available.

We also pride ourselves in attracting the best in the business to present our food programs. Maeve O'Meara, Guy Grossi, Guillaume Brahimi, Luke Nguyen, Mattew Evans, Adriano Zumbo and Peter Kuruvita are among our current stable of SBS Food presenters.

Along with travelling the world in search of fabulous food stories, SBS Food also creates distinctive commissioned television content that truly reflects Australia’s multicultural society. My Family Feast is a recent example of this, as is Food Safari.

Commissioned Food and Leisure programs are (normally) 25 minutes in duration and of a production standard suitable for prime time.


Documentaries
John Godfrey is the Commissioning Editor for Documentaries at SBS. We commission specialist factual documentaries - mainly science, history, and indigenous topics, and more contemporary factual projects dealing with more topical social issues and innovative forms of documentary.

Distinctive Content
The key word for SBS documentaries is ‘distinctive’. That is documentary content that feels like it’s designed distinctly for SBS, and that you can only get on SBS both in terms of subject and form.

If a documentary feels it could be commissioned by the ABC or feels like it fits into their schedule, we will not commission it. If it feels like we’re not doing it first we’re probably not going to do it. If it feels as if the project isn’t specifically designed with SBS in mind we’re not going to do it.

We see distinctive content as an equation: Charter + Commissioning Values = Distinctive Content

Charter
Everything we do in SBS Documentaries must be clearly seeded in our Charter. But that doesn’t mean niche – we want creatively ambitious ideas based on subjects that emanate from our Charter that will engage and entertain all Australians. It’s absolutely crucial that your ideas demonstrate how they explore Australian multicultural issues, whatever the documentary genre – be it science, history, contemporary social issues.

Commissioning Values
Our four commissioning values are:

• Provoke debate
  
• Push boundaries
  
• Surprise audiences
  
• Inspire change
  

We picked these values as ones that define SBS Documentaries as different to anyone else in the Australian broadcast landscape, because

• we want to be known for ideas that other broadcasters wouldn’t consider
• we want our documentaries to be talked about
• we want to encourage innovative approaches to documentaries
  

What We Are Looking For 2011/2012

What are we looking for?

Big Bold Series
Building on Immigration Nation – The Secret History Of Us, Go Back To Where You Came From and The Family, we’re looking to commission 3 big bold series, in 2011/12. We are seeking content that is creatively ambitious in subject and form.

These are statement-making series that have the potential to be ‘talked about TV’. They need to deliver on the commissioning equation that we’ve outlined and they need to be:

• High Concept series or documentaries that are big in scale that gets us into contemporary social issues in a really memorable way.
• Aiming to find a returnable series concept so we can build our relationship with our audience more.
• If it’s the next Immigration Nation, it doesn’t have to be the same approach or form but it should be equally as provocative - it could be more character-driven, have re-enactments or a presenter.
• It could find another thesis or prism though which to look at Australian multicultural history, it could be a more contemporary series that looks at the immigration debate, it could be a series that looks at race, or religion.
• Minimum three x one hour episodes but it can be longer. In terms of series structure, we’re open minded, but we do encourage you to think big, for example The Family is an 8 x 60 minutes. If the idea is right for us we’ll find a way to back it.
• Looking for multicultural talent that could operate in this serious documentary space.
  

Science Season
We also want to build another science season of six documentaries.

• We want the next science season to reflect our Charter and commissioning values more.
• People should focus on medical stories about big health issues that affect Australian multicultural society with cutting edge science. Multicultural Australia doesn’t have to be the headline of the documentary, but it has to be directly relevant to Australian multicultural groups and has to be part of the narrative.
• It could be anything from a single one hour documentary to a two x one hour show.
• We are also open to short science series that work outside a science season of a minimum three x one hours.
• We’re not looking for any specific form or approach. It could be ob doc, constructed, presenter-led, experiment led - the form is less important than an idea that fulfils the editorial brief that relates to Multicultural Australia, and can attract a broad audience.
  

Single Documentaries, Short Series and Seasons
We are commissioning single docs. However we will require that they have the ability to have a high impact and really punch through. We may also build single docs into seasons so as to maximise our ability to market them and build extra value around them.
We are also looking for short run series of 2 – 4 episodes that delve into subject areas such as: social inclusion, race, health, the immigration debate, religion. Islam for example is something we are very keen to explore.

Indigenous
With our indigenous documentaries, we are looking for:

• Documentaries that tackle big subjects that will make a difference.
• Character and emotional engagement are qualities that are vital.

But also surprise audiences - audiences automatically think they know what indigenous documentaries are going to be saying, are going to be revealing, and they need to be surprised.

We want to encourage filmmakers to think a bit differently - to not necessarily think of traditional observational documentary. Maybe it is more constructed, more thesis-driven, a what if drama doc, a swap format, an advocate presenter. But surprise audiences is a big box to tick here.

New Talent
We are also looking for fresh, new documentary on screen talent. A provocative multicultural voice who can appeal to our core documentary audience and who can explore Australia from a multicultural perspective with intelligence and a playful nature.

We are not looking for:

We don’t commission arts, natural history and documentaries that don’t have significant Australian content. Acquisitions buy international stories and we commission Australian stories.

We don't as a rule, commission feature docs, although the upcoming The Tall Man is the exception. We also don’t commission half hours as we don’t have the slots, and the strand Secrets & Lives will no longer continue

360 Degree Commissioning
We are adopting 360 degree commissioning to all our significant documentary series. Not just a website that’s bolted onto a TV series but true 360 content delivery. This means through TV, Radio, Online and through a new department at SBS called Outreach.

SBS Outreach is about taking our content beyond the screen and into communities. This is done in partnership with existing organisations to create a shared agenda and build an offering to the public on the ground. This could take the form of a booklet, an event or school packs, or other idea.