As NITV and SBS sharpen their Always Was, Always Will Be offering for January 26, the strategy is clear: fewer programs, bigger moments, and stories that travel across platforms without losing their cultural centre.
Running until the 26th, the 2026 slate positions First Nations storytelling not as a side-channel exercise, but as a network-wide event across NITV, SBS and SBS On Demand – live, documentary and news-led, built for appointment viewing rather than quiet catch-up
Alongside tentpole titles like The Colleano Heart, the WugulOra Morning Ceremony and NITV News: Day 26, one program quietly deepens the slate’s emotional register: Earth Oven, fronted by Temuera Morrison.
The power of gathering
Morrison’s Earth Oven episode, set in Cairns, explores a practice that transcends geography: cooking food in the ground to feed many, mark milestones, and bring people together.
For Morrison, the series was sparked by a production idea from Nicole Horan and her partner Marara of Hi Mama Productions, who wanted to explore how cultures around the world share variations of the same ancient method. In Aotearoa, it’s the hāngi. Across Polynesia – Fiji, Hawaii, Tahiti – the practice is instantly recognisable. In Australia, it becomes the bang-gaa.
The appeal, Morrison explains, is not novelty but familiarity.
Earth ovens are how communities feed hundreds at once – for birthdays, funerals and celebrations – when the point isn’t efficiency, but togetherness.
“If you’ve got a couple of hundred people turning up, well, this is the way to do it in one hit,” he says. “We come together under the umbrella of love. Around the fire, we’re all the same.”
Temuera Morrison
Cooking as culture, not performance
What unfolds in Earth Oven is deliberately unpolished. The emphasis is on preparation, patience and process – the digging, the heating of stones, the waiting – followed by the shared act of eating.
Morrison describes the moment the food is unearthed as its own kind of ceremony. Conversation fades. Enjoyment takes over. The noise becomes wordless.
“And then that’s the buzz for me,” he says. “Just seeing the enjoyment on their faces.”
It’s a sequence that fits neatly within SBS’s broader January 26 programming logic: stories grounded in lived experience rather than explanation; moments that assume audience intelligence rather than over-contextualising.
A personal project inside a broader slate
For Morrison, the series also offered something rare – the chance to be present without performance.
“Even though I’m an actor, this was a moment for me not to be pretending that I’m somebody else or hiding behind a character,” he said.
That authenticity aligns closely with the Always Was, Always Will Be slate’s wider intent. Rather than sprawling across dozens of titles, SBS and NITV have tightened the focus to a handful of programs that do distinct jobs: a landmark documentary The Colleano Heart, a live cultural opening WugulOra, a news-led editorial spine NITV News: Day 26, and quieter, connective works like Earth Oven that explore culture through everyday acts.
“It’s more about bringing people back together,” Morrison says. “The coming together of eating. We’re all beautiful people, and we come together as a family.”
Temuera Morrison
Why it fits SBS’s January strategy
From a network perspective, Earth Oven operates as connective tissue. It doesn’t carry the weight of primetime news or a flagship documentary, but it deepens the slate’s thematic cohesion – culture as practice, not debate; identity as something lived rather than argued.
Morrison’s reflections land on a universal note: families, food, elders, and children. The basics.
“There’s a whole lot of stuff going on today, but really we’re the same,” he says. “People aren’t that much different. We love our families. We want to feed our children. We want to feed our old people.”
In a January 26 schedule designed for reach and repetition across platforms, that simplicity may be its quiet strength.
As SBS and NITV once again consolidate their Always Was, Always Will Be programming into a tight, network-wide moment, Earth Oven shows how cultural storytelling can sit comfortably alongside live broadcast and news – grounded, generous, and unafraid to slow things down.