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SBS steps up News and Current Affairs for 2012

World News Australia moves its late bulletin to 10:30pm and Dateline will shift to Tuesdays.

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SBS has announced some significant changes to news and current affairs line-up for 2012.

World News Australia will return with a new set and its late edition news will shift from 9:30pm to  10.30pm, effectively taking advantage of the space that was occupied by TEN Late News.

Rolling newsbreaks will also be introduced throughout the night.

Dateline will shift to Tuesdays in February, to join Insight, combining two of the broadcaster’s strongest products.

Indigenous current affairs program, Living Black, will also return.

“SBS’s news and current affairs offering is a true cross platform experience for our audience,” SBS Managing Director Michael Ebeid said.

“We couple our in-depth television and radio news and current affairs services with our online expertise and our World News Australia app – which was the i-Tunes app of the week when it launched and now has more than 200,000 downloads for the i-Phone and i-Pad. On average around 200,000 unique browsers use our World News Australia online service each month.”

SBS Director of News and Current Affairs, Paul Cutler, added, “At a time when other networks are cutting investment in serious news and current affairs content, SBS is bucking the trend, refreshing our brands and increasing our commitment.

“Australian audiences know they can rely on SBS to deliver breaking news with a unique international perspective from some of the best in the business. We hope to be able to continue to invest in and expand our services in 2012.”

18 Responses

  1. Moving the 9:30 news is a disaster for many of us, that either run our own business, have to work past the standard 9-5 or have kids etc etc.
    Personally my wife and I plan our dinner around the 9:30 news. We are often too exhausted to sit at the table after a hard day at work.
    As far as trying to match the void left by channel 10 changing their time slot, this makes no sense. SBS is an entirely different audience. I would say those with a more diverse view of the world. I don’t believe the average commercial station viewer would be flipping over.

  2. Hopefully a darker set — the current one seems so bright! But also I hope SBS have kept in mind the presenting style of TEN’s Late News; it’s late at night, keep it informal, have some oddball stories, not just serious news.

  4. Happy to read about the new World News Australia set & Dateline moving to Tuesdays, but I’m sorry to inform them that they won’t be getting too many former TEN Late News viewers as they are completely different programs. Most likely they’ll just bleed viewers to Lateline & vice-versa Lateline to WNA. That’s a bit of a shame, but I understand why they’re doing – to give SBS One primetime more flexibility with various programs.

  6. I hope this means that their weekday movies will start at 8:30 now rather than just not having them. However, it means I will be watching less SBS news now as, while there was occasionally nothing else I wanted to watch at 9:30, I’m still enjoying Craig Ferguson at 10:30. I’d skip it for a decent movie but not for news that’s 3 hours old (in Perth).

  7. Frankly I don’t see the point of rolling newsbreaks on SBS. The news to the West coast is already delayed by 2 to 3 hours making news-breaks on SBS less than timely and somewhat redundant. And moving the late news to 10:30 – what a stroke of genius. Maybe now we’ll get to see some overseas films showing at a more decent hour of the evening.

  10. Can’t believe they’re keeping Ricardo. He is absolutely the worst newsreader I have Ever seen and makes me actively switch off. Not only is his presentation style appalling but he can’t even get the words out half the time.

  14. Smart move by SBS taking over Tens Late News timeslot. There’s a very strong and loyal news base out there at 10:30pm. Shame Murdoch didnt realise this and leave Sandra Sully right where she belonged.

  15. Despite Culter’s gloating on increased news content, it has to be said that there are a lot of staff cuts around the building and there’ll be an ‘Ingite’ style studio taking care of the news next year. Less crew and more computers = Longer late news.

  18. Well done to them for expanding their news coverage, although with Lateline also at 10:30pm, I’m not sure it will work for them, especially considering they previously had a monopoly of the 9:30pm news market.

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