On 1 March 2023, SBS Radio announced the results of another 5-year program review.
Using the latest Census of Population Australia, the review analyzed the size of language communities and set a requirement of a minimum of 25,000 speakers of a given language to have radio programs.
According to the Census 2021, the Bulgarian community in the whole of Australia numbers only 2,800 people.
Based on a number of selection criteria (size of the community, English language proficiency, recentness of arrival and few other) the Bulgarian program, with a 45-year history, will be decommissioned on April 30.
A similar fate befell 5 other programs -Albanian, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Finnish. And the Hungarian, Czech and Estonian programs were terminated not long ago.
Along with the closing of the above mentioned programs, 4 new language programs of communities with high needs will be introduced: Bislama (Vanuatu), Malay (Malaysia), Oromo (Ethiopia and Kenya), and Tetum (Timor).
David Hua, Director of SBS Audio and Language Content, addresses some concerns raised by our listeners.
