Tributes paid to Oz TV’s Manzoufas

Influential Australian TV exec Marena Manzoufas, one of the founders of public broadcaster SBS Television, has died aged 68.

Marena Manzoufas

Manzoufas died on July 5 as a result of brain cancer. Among numerous accomplishments in the Australian TV business, she was part of Bruce Gyngell’s team that set up SBS Television in 1980, where she established its first subtitling unit.

Manzoufas went on to hold top roles at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) as well as Beyond Television, where she was general manager of distribution. At Beyond, she was directly involved in the development and sale of Australian content for television both in Australia and overseas.

During her two stints at the ABC, Manzoufas held roles such as head of acquisitions and ABC International, and was head of network programming for television from 2001 until her retirement.

In the latter position, Manzoufas determined what Australians would watch and when over the range of ABC channels.

Manzoufas was born in Comboyne, New South Wales (NSW) on October 30, 1950 and was originally known as Marena Raynor until she changed to her Greek name.

She became actively involved in the development of Australia’s multicultural policy working on the NSW Government’s 1978 Ethnic Affairs Commission Report and in 1979-1980 on the Inquiry into Multicultural Television.

Describing her work to set up SBS Television’s first subtitling unit, Manzoufas said: “The discussion that the fifth channel in Sydney and Melbourne should be a multicultural service, accessible to the community at large, and not an ethnic television service accessible only to particular language speakers at particular times, led directly to the need to establish a subtitling capacity, a quite new and unique venture in Australian television.

“When the unit was established, there was virtually no existing expertise in Australia, no trained personnel and certainly no body of knowledge or experience on which to draw.”

Jennifer Bott, CEO of Australia’s National Institute of Dramatic Art, and Sue Walpole, a former Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner, said in a joint statement that Manzoufas “made an immense contribution to the world of television.”

Walpole and Bott added: “Along with her stellar contribution to Australia’s television culture, Marena leaves a strong group of devoted friends and her ‘adopted’ family, the Walpoles, behind.”