To coincide with Global Accessibility Awareness Day, the ABC has launched a TV spot entirely performed in Auslan. Produced by ABC MADE, this marks one of the first times ever that a TV spot has been completely performed in Auslan! The sign- along features Auslan users from across the country (and beyond) signing “I Am Australian” with 82 people submitting their videos to participate in the TV spot.
The ABC worked with The Deaf Society and Deaf Services to reach out to Auslan users from all over Australia. The ABC would like to thank the many team members who were involved in creating the instructional video to share with their network. The ABC also reached out to Expression Australia, Aussie Deaf Kids and Auslan for Everyone.
NOTABLE SIGN -ALONG PARTICIPANTS INCLUDE:
Sally Strobridge from Sally and Possum , Australia’s first ever TV show entirely in Auslan.
Emma Wiggle (Emma Watkins) who uses Auslan to provide access for children who use sign language, children who may be deaf, have deaf parents, are on the autism spectrum or who are non-verbal. Emma grew up with friends who are deaf and is currently studying Auslan.
Something which I don’t believe has been mentioned here yet (even though the trials kicked off last Sunday on the main channel, ABC COMEDY/KIDS will have their first AD programs this week), a full screen advisory for the programs with audio descriptions on ABC-TV:
The pre-program Viewer Advisory and in-program Supers for Audio Description being used on ABC Kids for the episodes of “Little J & Big Cuz” are exactly the same as those on the main channel (I’d imagine this will also be the case on ABC COMEDY, with tonight’s High Fidelity being their first show with AD) so nothing new to post in that regard, but while going through the recording I did notice this:
The text at the end of the opener could be a bit bigger but other than that good they kept the original music and a fair update with some daily imaging around the precinct looking good.
To be honest, I think the music should’ve been updated.
The classic “ABC-TV Question Time” theme music sounds not too dissimilar to the theme of Graham Kennedy’s News Show/Coast to Coast from over 30 years ago - might’ve been fine back in the Late 80s but it’s very cheesy for this day and age.
With the announcement during the 2021 Upfronts that ABC COMEDY will be rebranded as ABC TV Plus in the new year, I wonder if we may soon see a new/refreshed On-Air Presentation for the ABC’s main channel?
Granted that there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the current graphics of ABC-TV but given what’s been said about the refreshed secondary channel (programming wise, much more of a complimentary service to the main channel than ABC2/Comedy has been for the past decade), I still wonder whether or not it’s possible that we might see a common package across both the main service and Plus…
Why? I know plenty of people who stream ABC(1) on iview. TV’s totally irrelevant. If anything, they should be moving away from ‘TV and iview’ in branding and just using ABC
Is having the main television channel branded as ABC TV really better or worse than having ABC Radio Sydney and other such names for the Local Radio stations? Besides, it’s probably good to have a level of brand separation between ABC TV/radio and the ABC as an overall organisation.
It’s funny you mention iview because they’ve been using an “ABC TV” brand on there to differentiate the main channel from all their other brands for a long time now. They obviously feel there’s some confusion going on.
IMHO they really should’ve kept ABC News 24 and ABC News Radio as the channel names. There’s no confusion, and it’s still clearly an ABC News product.
Ditto, in the age multichannels, having ABC1 or SBS1 is a clear signifier that the TV channel is being referenced even if people still call it ABC and SBS respectively.
