SBS stoops under the Golden Arches

Why oh why on Monday night did the usually impeccable SBS World News finish the program with a suspiciously positive story on Macdonalds’ proposed new look? SBS is the channel people turn to for their news, having filled their quota of the infotainment available on Seven, Nine and Ten.

While watching SBS one’s advertising guard is down, the usual scepticism which filters television’s ‘current affairs’ programs is placed on the coffee table with the remains of that night’s dinner. It was therefore a vulnerable audience who last night watched an imported American commercial dressed as a news piece, which told of Mcdonald’s plans to have free Internet and squishy coaches in it’s restaurants.

The drawn out footage of a shiny new look Maccers, and light hearted debate on what the food chain really meant to random individuals was a confusing slightly channel Seven style finish to a news night which was dominated by the unrelenting terrors of Iraq and Sudan’s Darfur region.

So is the infiltration of advertising on SBS already spreading meaningless and misleading information like a disease through a once healthy channel?. What does the commercialization of SBS mean for the viewers?, maybe our Bull Sh*tometers should be set to turn on when SBS is on as well as all the other stations now.