January this year marked the return of Nine‘s balls with the network’s revamped image as it tries to win back #1 position in the ratings. February marked the advent of ABC1 as our national broadcaster ABC set out to “redefine television” by re-branding its two channels.
And now, SBS is set to also ring in the changes with a rework of its fifteen-year-old logo as a means of re-inventing itself after a rather controversial 2007 – marked by the departure of long-time newsreader Mary Kostakidis and the move to insert commercial breaks within programs.
The Australian today reports that the SBS logo and its overall on-air presentation will receive a facelift following eighteen months of audience research, and a similar period of fairly lack lustre on-air presentation comprising remnants of the channel’s last revamp in 2004. But managing director Shaun Brown has insisted that the familiar Mercator map logo, launched in 1993, will not go away, “Why get rid of it? We love it anyhow, and the research has confirmed it’s widely admired, so we were only going to make it a little bit more contemporary.”
With the new-look logo will be a new slogan “Six billion stories and counting”, which co-incidentally matches the initials SBS.
SBS’ revamped presentation is intended to give the channel a more contemporary feel although The Australian suggests that some critics will feel it is just window-dressing a network now becoming more familiar as a pseudo-commercial media outlet that has abandoned its multicultural charter.
The date for the new-look SBS has not been announced although the network does have one of its most popular events, the Eurovision Song Contest, being broadcast over three nights next month and which may be an ideal time to unveil its facelift to a willing audience.
