Special Broadcasting Services (SBS) is a hybrid-funded Australian public broadcasting service that was set up in 1975 to provide multilingual and multicultural radio and television services that “inform, educate and entertain all Australians and, in doing so, reflect Australia’s multicultural society”.
It broadcasts in 74 languages but, on its 40th anniversary, the management of SBS announced it would curtail further its weekly programmes in the Maltese language from four to two hours.
Understandably, the Maltese community in Australia, which has a high proportion of over-65s, has not taken this development well and is urging people to sign an online petition with the slogan ‘Save the Maltese language programme on SBS radio’.
Radio and TV services depend on audience share to determine how programmes are financed. This applies to private as well as public broadcasting services. The first generation Maltese in Australia who are still very attached to the use of the Maltese language will find that, as they grow older, they will be deprived of one source that kept their links with their native land alive: listening to a Maltese language programme on SBS.
The problems relating to ageing are universal. The older people get, the more prone they become to loneliness and isolation. Lack of communication in their native tongue will, for many older Maltese Australians, be an avoidable cause of social marginalisation. The Maltese Community Councils of New South Wales and Victoria are right in claiming that Maltese language programmes on SBS provide the Maltese community with a sense of comfort and security and a quality of life that they would otherwise not enjoy.
The principles of economics do not always do justice to the principles of good social well-being in a community that is increasingly facing the challenges of ageing. At a time when every government is promoting active ageing, it is important that older people who want to keep in touch with what is going on around and prefer to do so by listening to programmes broadcast in their native language should not be deprived of this small but important service.
The Maltese community in Australia and their leaders should go beyond appealing to the SBS radio management to reconsider their decision to reduce the time for broadcasting in Maltese. Coming up with ideas to make broadcasting in this language commercially viable would promote a positive attitude that may persuade the SBS management to reconsider their budget-tightening decisions.
NGOs both in Australia and in Malta that have some special interest in promoting social cohesion, especially among the elderly, should consider sponsoring Maltese programmes on Australian radio to defray some of the broadcasting costs.
Similarly, the Maltese government should channel some funds to help the elderly Maltese in Australia to get the small ‘luxuries’ that mean so much to them. After all, these same migrants must have contributed so much in the past by sending money to their relatives in Malta at times when these were struggling to make both ends meet.
The extended family that was such a comforting reality of Maltese culture in past decades has today almost vanished both in Malta and in Australia, where so many Maltese migrated over the past 50 years. But the duty to help older members of a community to remain active remains. SBS broadcasts in Maltese can help to achieve this aim.