SBS announces changes to daytime schedule

SBS has advised of changes to its daytime schedule, introducing additional English-speaking international news bulletins from 5am, changes to its afternoon line-up, and new foreign-language bulletins on SBS 2.

Current broadcasts on SBS that are moving to SBS 2 are Cantonese, Japanese, Korean and Mandarin.

SBS Director of News and Current Affairs Jim Carroll said: “SBS is the most trusted network for news from across the world and we are proud to bring more global coverage to all Australians in the breakfast news slot. These English news bullets will give Australian audiences a perspective on how other nations are seeing and covering world events.

“Our nation has changed. There are twice as many speakers of languages other than English (LOTE) in Australia than 30 years ago. Increasing our language news offering is about actively playing a role in supporting Australia’s diverse multicultural communities to participate in Australian life. This further cements our position as one of the world’s most linguistically diverse broadcasters through what will be a significant increase in our LOTE content offer. Whether people want to watch or listen on their smartphone, or tune in on TV, SBS offers the most comprehensive and diverse news service.

Between 5:00am and 7:30am from 4 October 2015, SBS will become the new breakfast destination for international news coverage from some of the world’s most respected broadcasters all delivered in English. The line-up includes bulletins from NHK (Japan), France 24, Deutsche Welle (Germany), Al Jazeera News (Qatar) and CCTV (China).

Remaining in their current daily slots on SBS are Italian at 7:30am, Filipino at 8.10am, French at 8:40am, Greek at 9:30am, German at 10:30am, Spanish at 11:00am, Arabic at 12:00pm and Turkish at 12:30pm.

Daytime repeats of Dateline, Living Black and NITV News Week in Review will enhance SBS’s daytime news offering by moving from their current 1:00pm slot to the new time of 3:00pm to engage with even more Australians. A new repeat slot for NITV’s Awaken will be introduced on Mondays at 1:00pm on SBS.

The PBS NewsHour will remain on the SBS main channel moving to 1:00pm Tuesday to Saturday (from its time slot of 2:00pm Tuesday to Friday and 1:00pm Saturday).

SBS will also introduce a one-hour arts and culture block on weekdays between 2:00pm and 3:00pm with programs from its former subscription arts channel STUDIO. SBS Arts will give a home to some of the best STUDIO programming including Andre Rieu, Celtic Woman and Marlon Brando, An Actor Named Desire.

SBS 2:

SBS proudly broadcasts news from highly regarded global outlets on SBS and SBS 2 in 36 languages, through World Watch. From October, the network will introduce 11 new World Watch international language news bulletins to SBS 2 catering for Australia’s growing Eastern European, African and South Asian communities, bringing them breaking news in their language.

The languages and bulletins joining the World Watch schedule line up include, African English (F24), Armenian (H1), Bangla (Channel-i), Bosnian (BHT1), Nepali (NTV), Punjabi (DD Punjab), Romanian (TVRi), Sinhalese (SLRC), Somali (UT), Tamil (Polimer) and Thai (Thai PBS).

With an ever increasing demand for consuming news wherever and whenever people choose, World Watch bulletins are also available via SBS On Demand and on SBS’s language websites www.sbs.com.au/yourlanguage