SBS content receives local and international plaudits
26 June 2009
SBS’s commitment to quality content, whatever the platform has been recognised both in Australia and abroad with awards for journalism and online and a swag of nominations for scriptwriting.
SBS has received eight nominations for the Australian Writers’ Guild Awards and the website for the ground-breaking historical documentary series First Australians was named in the Interactive Media Awards’ Top Ten Sites in the world for 2008 announced yesterday in New York.
On the news and current affairs front, SBS Journalist Yaara Bou Melhem won the television category at the Walkley Foundation’s Young Australian Journalist of the Year Awards held last night. This is the second year in a row that SBS has taken out the award.
SBS’s Director of News and Current Affairs, Paul Cutler said: “Congratulations to Yaara who won for her Dateline report on women who were imprisoned by Jordanian authorities to protect them from honour killings. SBS had two of the three finalists in the TV category, with Yalda Hakim being short-listed for her Dateline report on Afghanistan.
“Yaara’s success is not only a tribute to the talent of all our young journalists, but also to our cadet program and our commitment to video journalism. In praising Yaara’s report, the judges made special mention of the fact that she had shot the feature entirely herself.”
The AWGIE Awards recognise excellence in Australian writing and SBS content has been nominated in a number of categories.
“The only disappointing part is that we are competing against ourselves in several categories,” SBS’s Director of Content – Television and Online, Matt Campbell said.
“Predictably the excellent documentary series First Australians has received two nominations and SBS’s stellar drama slate of East West 101 and The Circuit, as well as Carla Cametti PD, have all received nominations.
“But, testament to the talented team SBS recruits to make content across a range of genres, we also received nominations for Comedy (Newstopia), Telemovie (Saved) and Feature Film (Mary and Max).
“Congratulations to everyone involved and best of luck at the AWGIE Awards in August.”
East West 101 and The Circuit were both nominated for scripts produced for the second series of each drama, both of which will screen on SBS ONE later this year.
“But our content lives on more than just our television screens,” Matt Campbell said.
“The website to support First Australians was a labour of love for those involved – it brought to life the incredible stories that formed part of the television documentary, but also elaborated on those stories and elicited original stories from users who visited the site.
“Like the television series, it is an invaluable historical and educational resource. Congratulations to the team involved on making it into the Top Ten Sites of 2008.”