SRB

Sandyan Reikom Bangsong (SRB), also known in English as the Sandian Broadcasting Corporation, is a Sandian and  founded on May 14, 1948 by the Government of Sandia. SRB's headquarters are located at the SRB Center, which itself is in the district of Yenchong, Kyoban, with offices around the country.

The broadcaster operates two radio networks: SRB FM1 and SRB FM2, along with the online SRB Web Radio service. It also operates the free-to-air television networks SRB TV1 and SRB TV2, along with the cable and satellite channel SRB TV4K. It produces and distributes nonfiction radio programs and both fiction and nonfiction television programs. With SRB TV4K's launch in February 2013, SRB became the world's first television broadcaster to provide content in Ultra HD.

SRB operates outside of Sandia through its SRB World-Sandia division. SRB World-Sandia owns SRB World, which is comprised of the English-language services SRB World-TV and SRB World-FM, along with the international Sandian-language television service SRB Sandia, which targets Sandian diaspora and provides subtitles in various languages.

1948–1959: Early broadcasts
SRB was established on May 14, 1948 by the Government of Sandia under the leadership of then-President Yohan Yeong. Its original purpose was to provide Sandia with its own state media, specifically a radio service. It launched the TSRB-FM radio station in Kyoban later that year, and plans were made to begin television broadcasts. The station was initially branded as Kyoban Radio, though it would be changed to SRB Kyoban Radio by the mid-1950s in an attempt to unify the station with SRB's other provincial stations, the newly launched TSRG-FM (Gongyae) and TSRX-FM (Bongkan).

On June 23, 1952, the broadcaster launched the SRB Television Service (now SRB TV1), with five provincial stations around the country. SRB officially changed the name of SRB Radio Network to SRB FM1 on December 31, 1952, the same day it launched SRB FM2. The company was also launching more local television and radio stations, attempting to provide more local multimedia news coverage throughout Sandia.

The SRB Television Service became SRB TV1 on May 1, 1959, the same day SRB TV2 was launched with stations in every province except Yongko, whose SRB TV2 station launched one day later. The following week SRB used SRB TV2 for its first color television broadcasts, which proved to be successful and resulted in SRB TV1 and SRB TV2 broadcasting all of its new programming in color, including newscasts.

1960–1971: The Kenyo Keya years
In 1960, longtime SRB employee Kenyo Keya was promoted to President following the death of predecessor Kyongo Moi, who served from 1954 to 1960. Keya sought to make large changes to SRB, starting with acquiring the Sandian television broadcast rights to the, as previous had been broadcast on YBS stations. The SRB was successful in receiving the TV broadcast rights.

On February 18, 1963, SRB began airing its first weekly national newscast, SRB News wa Goku Kei, from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. on SRB TV1. It made history as the first national newscast in Sandian history, and paved the way for similar news television programs on commercial networks. A radio equivalent aired on SRB FM1 as well. Keya stated that—in his own opinion—it was time for Sandia to "get serious about the news", which resulted in SRB changing its slogan to Sigso Sandia'ui, which translates to "Sandia's News" in English.

1971–1975: Noran Myo takes over
On November 2, 1971, Kenyo Keya died as the result of a heart attack he had earlier that day, leading to Senior Vice President Noran Myo becoming the head of the corporation. Due to Myo's past as a diehard conservative, it was during this era that many centrist and liberal news sources made jokes about SRB for shifting to a right-leaning bias in its news, which Myo repeatedly denied by stating that SRB was a centrist broadcaster, completely unaware of the claims' status as humor.

Under Myo's leadership, SRB aired more fiction programming on radio and television. Myo and Vice President Kyugo Hae worked towards turning SRB TV1 and SRB FM1 into "educational" and "informative" networks, while making SRB TV2 and SRB FM2 have more fiction programming. 1972 saw the debut of SRB Drama Sayeog, a name given to the yearly historical drama series broadcast on SRB TV2, as well as various pop culture-focused talk shows on SRB FM2.

1976–1980: The Yokan Jei era
On January 1, 1976, businessman and former Vice President Yokan Jei became the head of SRB. Not longer after he started leading the company, he proposed that it be split into to divisions: SRB Radio and SRB Television. The split officially took effect on December 31, 1976.

Aside from the split, not a lot of changes occurred during the Yokan Jei era. Jei believed the broadcaster was doing okay after the changes Myo made, despite also holding contempt for him for his supposed "past of extremism".

1980–1993: SRB's "Dark Age"
On June 6, 1980, and Rita Mou became SRB's President, making her the company's first female leader. Since aenimo industry was becoming increasingly successful throughout the mid-1980s in Sandia, Mou's team launched its own animation studio, SRB Aenimo, and decided that its programs should be broadcast on SRB TV2. During this period, viewership was at an all-time high for SRB TV2, which was made more popular by aenimo.

From 1985 to 1987, SRB TV2 aired four historical drama aenimo series: 18th Century Heroes, Amazing Warrior Toki, Love in a World of Dark, and Masters of the Martial Arts. While Masters of the Martial Arts proved to be successful and had constantly boosted ratings, the other series drew in consistently low ratings, all while animators felt overworked and underpaid. SRB Aenimo proved to be a financial failure that cost SRB more than ₩500,000, and the studio was closed in May 1988.

Meanwhile, audiences decreased overall for SRB FM1's programs, primarily due to the popularity of SRB TV1's television "alternatives" to the broadcaster's radio programming.

Criticism of Mou's leadership by the media increased overwhelmingly, and it all culminated on October 3, 1990, when Mou died after herself in her apartment. Leadership quickly went to former Vice President Kyuri Nie, who only served as President until March 1993 when he quit working for SRB to become an employee at NBN, where he is currently Executive Chairman.

Mou's and Nie's leaderships are colloquially referred to as SRB's "Giheug'am" (기흑암, "Dark Age") by Sandian television and radio historians.

1993–2007: Variegating SRB's content
Aeki Yo took over SRB in 1993, and remained its President until 1999. During this period, SRB's television channels began broadcasting more sports content, as well as reality shows and music-themed content. 1995 saw the launch of I Live Here, which ran until 2007, making it one of SRB's longest running TV programs, as well as the longest running Sandian reality show.

In 1999, Kaegi Seon took over Yo's operations, and stayed as President until 2007. In late 2003, the broadcaster began experimenting with 1080i high-definition simulcasts of its television channel (see SRB TV1 HD and SRB TV2 HD), as well as 5.1 surround sound, which proved to be successful with audiences. In 2005, it was announced by Vice President Kongi Moru that SRB was looking to distribute its programs to other Asian countries and possibly North America, which led to the development of the SRB World-Sandia division.

2007–2015: Creation of SRB World, move to HD
SRB World was founded in May 2007; SRB World-TV and SRB World-FM launched the following month, and SRB Sandia began broadcasting in July 2008. Though the first two were launched under Seon, SRB World was founded in May 2007; SRB World-TV and SRB World-FM launched the following month, and SRB Sandia began broadcasting in July 2008. Though the first two were launched under Seon, he died in December 2007, and operations were taken over by former Senior Vice President Hando Kan, who became the Chairman, while Yoken Wang became the President of SRB. Under Kan and Owen's leadership, SRB's radio audiences began skyrocketing, as did visits to the newly launched online radio service SRB Web Radio.

In 2009, SRB TV1's Hamgyeong Sandyan (, "Sandian Experience") and SRB TV2's music show SRB Music Live became the last shows broadcast in   on their respect networks. Wang wanted to "look the future in the eye" by making sure all of SRB's television content was in and. The same thing applied to SRB World-TV and SRB Sandia. However, none of these channels would officially use 16:9 framing for all of their graphical imaging (including the network bug and program advertisements) until November 2015.

After several years of experimenting with  technology, on February 5, 2013, SRB launched SRB TV4K, the world's first   television channel, for cable and satellite television services. As of 2022, SRB TV4K is carried by four cable providers and three satellite providers.

2015–present: Modern era
In October 2015, Hando Kan died from cancer, and Wang left the company in November. Journalist and media executive Tokyu Mae took over from there, and has been the President of SRB since November 2, 2015. Under Chi's leadership, in June 2016, SRB launched the subscription streaming service SRB Mini, which provided various radio and television programs produced and distributed by SRB, as well as shows from associated English-language broadcasters such as the and the, albeit with Sandian-language dubbing or subtitles. However, SRB struggled to gain a userbase for SRB Mini, and the service was discontinued in October 2017, with over ₩4,000 being returned to subscribers.

Organization and operations
Partially modeled after Martonia's MBC, the Sandian Broadcasting Corporation is a hybrid-funded statutory corporation which operates as a public service broadcaster. Each year, roughly 25–30% of its funding comes from the Govenment of Sandia, while the other 70–75% comes from nonprofit corporations and organizations. The company is sometimes described as a nonprofit corporation because it is not as "government dependent" as other government-owned broadcasters, such as the Australian or the Japanese. SRB is a member of the.

SRB is operated by an executive board, which consists of the President, the Vice President, and eight to twelve managing directors who oversee SRB's operations and current financial state. SRB World-Sandia far receives more Government funding than the other divisions and subsidiaries of SRB, oftentimes reaching the 70–79% range.

News and documentaries
SRB broadcasts numerous local and national news and documentary television programs. This includes its flagship evening newscast, SRB News at Night, as well as its long-running morning news shows SRB Morning News, both of which are broadcast on SRB TV1. TV1 and TV2 both air Pop Culture District,, a weekly documentary series about the entertainment industry in Sandia. All of these programs also air on SRB Sandia.

SRB World also produces and distributes its own English-language news shows designed for foreign viewers, including the long-running SRB Newspost, which are broadcast on SRB World TV.

Drama
In addition to the yearly SRB Drama Sayeog that airs on SRB TV1, SRB also shows the hour-long anthology drama SRB Chima Drama, which premiered in 1998 and airs Saturday mornings from 9:00 to 10:00 as of 2022.

SRB is also credited with popularizing the hwadrama, a domestically popular type of dramatic television film, with its 2010 broadcast of Warrior's Lonely Soul, which has since been released on home video internationally. Since then, SBS has aired one or two hwadrama works every year.

Music
SRB TV2 offers several music-related television shows. It airs SRB Music Live, SRB's first live music show which premiered in 1994, as well as SRB Showcase, a show that showcases various music videos by Sandian musical artists. In May 2013, roughly three months after the channel's launch, SRB TV4K began simulcasting SRB Music Live, making it the first live TV show in Sandia to be broadcast in 4K Ultra HD.

From 2013 to 2020, SRB TV2 broadcast SRB Music Top 25, a yearly television special that counted down the twenty-five greatest S-pop music videos of each special's respective year.

Children's shows
SRB TV1 airs various children's television shows. The -inspired show Gyese Geumjo (, "Little World") was originally broadcast weekday mornings from 1971 to 2004, making it the longest-running children's show on Sandian television.

2007 — SRB Music Live incident and firing of hosts
.

On January 18, 2007, SRB TV2 broadcast a new episode of SRB Music Live that ended with S-pop girl group Starpink performing "Mainstay". Near the end of the performance, the entire group synchronously jumped. However, as the group was positioned near the edge of the stage, member Mori jumped further forward than the rest of Starpink's members and fell off the stage, hitting her head and responding to questions about her health in a slurred manner off-camera. The show then cut to hosts Sando Yui and Kira Ako in the nearby SRB studio, laughing at and joking about the incident, then hurriedly saying the show's usual closing lines.

. Yui and Ako faced immense criticism the next day, with many viewers—including critics and journalists—calling for the hosts to be suspended or fired. SRB released a press statement the next day in which it apologized for the "unfortunate incident" and offered condolences to Mori; however, the broadcaster refused to fire the hosts, stating that "one joke is not a reason to fire someone".

2020 — World Notice controversy
In May 27, 2020, SRB TV1 aired a new episode of the documentary program World Notice revolving around the. Throughout the program, journalist and presenter Senka Yin made multiple comments criticizing and ridiculing Russian President, describing him as "disgusting" and his association of Ukraine with Nazism "inherently disgusting" and "a clear example of Ukrainophobia". The episode was widely criticized by conservative media the next day, as they called the episode "Russophobic" and accused SRB of having a left-leaning bias and discriminating against Russian people in general. The episode also caught the attention of Conservative politician and former Bongkan Governor Songso Kwi, who said in a Postedge text that the episode was "damaging Russia's reputation", "clearly discriminatory against ethnic Russians", and "evidence of SRB's liberal, pro-Zelensky bias". He also implied throughout the article that public broadcasters should focus on traditionalist and conservative values instead of creating "leftist propaganda".

The following day, SRB released a statement in regards to the situation, which reads as follows:
 * SRB and our President Tokyu Mae would like to note that the views and opinions of those who appear on our SRB TV1 program World Notice are representative of themselves, and not those who appear as guests on the program. We are currently planning on editing our episodes to include this or a similar disclaimer at the beginning of our program, and we apologize to any viewers whose feelings may have been hurt by last night's episode. The views expressed there were those of Mr. [Senka] Yin, and not the rest of SRB's staff. We are currently working toward making all of our nonfiction programs more politically neutral.