12 Facts About SBS Radio

SBS Radio is an Australian radio network owned by the Special Broadcasting Service directed towards newly arrived immigrants in Australia.

SBS Radio originally began as two stations based in Melbourne and Sydney, set up to provide pre-recorded information about the then-new Medibank health care system in languages other than English.

SBS Radio'story of SBS Radio goes back to the 1970s when the government started considering the demand for broadcasting in languages other than English after a mass-influx of foreign-born populace post World War Two.

In 1999, in light of the Kosovar crisis in the Balkans, SBS Radio temporarily increased the broadcast times of the Albanian program to cater for the influx of Kosovar refugees who were coming to Australia.

In 2003 SBS underwent a historic review of its radio operations, dropping four languages, Irish Gaelic, Scots Gaelic, Welsh, and Belarusian, while introducing new programs in Amharic, Malay, Nepali, and Somali.

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SBS Radio has three main radio services, Radio 1, Radio 2 and Radio 3, as well as a national FM service.

On digital radio in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Canberra, SBS has some additional digital-only services: SBS Chill, a mix of chillout and world music; SBS PopAsia, a mixture of J-pop, K-pop and C-pop; SBS PopDesi, a mixture of Bhangra, Bollywood music and South Asian pop music; SBS Arabic 24, a 24-hour Arabic radio station, which uses BBC Arabic programming, and SBS PopAraby, featuring Arabic pop music.

On 20 November 2017, SBS Radio reorganized its radio service, which included dropping services in twelve languages that either weren't as widely spoken, or had communities who weren't in need of a dedicated service in their language, based on the national census that was conducted by the government the previous year.

Notes: All languages broadcast on SBS Radio 1 were available on the national FM service, as well as all languages on SBS Radio 2, except Dari, Lao and Maltese.

SBS Radio began a trial of RDS in Sydney and Melbourne FM areas, in November 2012.

SBS Radio is managed, monitored and maintained via SBS Radio Operations.

Distribution of SBS Radio content is managed by third-parties such as Broadcast Australia and other specialist vendors.