Sbs history

So the first operation, in the spring of 1941, was carried out by Courtney and Willmott, these two giants of the story.

Willmott picked two of his best people – Major Logan Scott-Bowden and Sergeant Bruce Ogden-Smith – to swim into the heavily guarded beaches of Normandy and gather information during the night of New Year’s Eve 1943.

Bruce Gyngell, who introduced television to Australia back in 1956, was given the task of introducing the first batch of programs on the new station.

The history of business at Oxford stretches back to 1965 when the Oxford Centre for Management Studies, later Templeton College and now Green-Templeton College, was founded.

SBS began test transmissions in April 1979 as SBS Ethnic Television when it showed various foreign language programs on ABV-2 Melbourne and ABN-2 Sydney on Sunday mornings.

Full-time transmission began at 6.30 pm on 24 October 1980 (United Nations Day) as Channel 0/28.

On 14 October 1983, the service expanded into Canberra on UHF28, Cooma and Goulburn on UHF58 and at the same time changed its name to Network 0–28.

On 18 February 1985, the station changed its name to SBS and began daytime transmissions.

On 5 January 1986 SBS ceased broadcasting on the VHF0 frequency.

Although, SBS Television commenced transmissions as a non-commercial television network, in 1991 it began accepting and broadcasting television advertisements (a controversial move at the time). These were shown between programs, rather than interrupting the programs.

Darwin was the last capital city to receive the channel, with a local signal launched on 20 May 1994.

Saïd Business School was formally founded in 1996, thanks to a generous donation from businessman and philanthropist, Wafic Saïd.

The year 2001 saw the introduction of digital terrestrial television in Australia with transmissions available to most of SBS Television's coverage area on 1 January 2001, this was soon followed by the gradual introduction of widescreen programming.

In 2007, The Movie Show returned with a new interactive ten-minute format, presented by Lisa Hensley and Michael Adams.

On 1 June 2009, SBS TV was renamed SBS One to coincide with the launch of its new sister channel SBS Two, which would carry programming geared towards younger audiences.

As of 10 December 2013, SBS no longer broadcasts on analogue TV and is now only available through digital TV or digital set-top box.

On 4 July 2015, SBS ONE changed its name back to SBS TV.

On 15 November 2016, SBS rebranded their sister station SBS 2 to SBS Viceland with content from US-Canadian broadcaster Vice Media after signing a deal with Vice Media on 23 June 2016.

On 1 July 2019, SBS World Movies started transmission on Channel 32, replacing the Standard Definition broadcast of Viceland, as Viceland moved to Channel 31 in HD, World Movies became the third multichannel, alongside SBS, Viceland and Food Network.

Saul David is a historian, broadcaster and author of several acclaimed works of fiction and non-fiction, including SBS Silent Warriors: The Authorised Wartime History (William Collins, 2021)