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SBS News in Arabic, Mandarin move to digital only

In-language bulletins attract too small an audience to survive on broadcast, but news packages will be available on third party platforms.

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Two in-language news bulletins, launched by SBS with some promise in 2022, are leaving broadcast to become digital-only news items.

SBS News in Arabic, and SBS News in Mandarin launched in 2022 with anchors Nissrine Khadra, Ali Bahnasawy and Hadil AlSwaiedi / Jeff Kuan, Rena Li and Michelle Chen.

Two half hour bulletins on SBS WorldWatch will become short-form video news packages on third party platforms throughout the day. SBS has 14.7 million video views on SBS Arabic’s YouTube and Facebook accounts and more than 8.2 million video views on SBS Chinese’s YouTube, Facebook, Weibo and WeChat accounts.

The news packages will not require news anchors nor studio production, but will still offer in-language for their communities. SBS will redeploy most of the affected staff but there may also be a handful of redundancies.

SBS maintains viewers are increasingly preferring digital platforms, with 49% of all Australians  using social media to access news and online video news consumption becoming ever more popular.

“SBS is very proud of our weekday nightly Arabic and Mandarin news bulletins which have been running for over two years,” said Mandi Wicks, Director of SBS News and Current Affairs. “Our data shows us that more and more of these audiences are seeking out news on our digital platforms throughout the day. This decision to shift to digital delivery platforms reflects that demand for timely, regular video news updates and will see us produce a record amount of in-language content for these communities.”

As the flagship locally-produced bulletins for SBS World Watch, it is unclear how this will impact the direction of the channel itself.

WorldWatch audience numbers are not available but are considered to be low. Last year the Sydney Morning Herald cited the average nightly national audience for the Arabic bulletin at about 151 viewers and about 858 people for the Mandarin bulletin.

SBS has always maintained with the different language news bulletins, viewers do not stick around from show to show.

“SBS WorldWatch is unique in that the language used in each program is different, therefore there is significant churn from one program to the next,” Wicks said last year.

2 Responses

  1. I cannot figure why there was an Arabic and Mandarin bulletin to the exclusion of other language and cultural groups.

    Similarly I don’t understand the programming policy of SBS’s NITV by airing the movie “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” which would have been more appropriate for SBS’s “World Movies”. I fail to see connections of “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” to our Indigenous cultures and issues.

    Beautiful movie and watched it because it revived my childhood memories, but don’t understand SBS’s NITV policy which should have been on the “World Movies” channel.

    Thanks

  2. The only justification for spending any resources on these 2 Worldwatch bulletins was to counter state propaganda from foreign govts but at an average of 900 and 150 odd viewers it’s just an absurd waste as is the whole Worldwatch project…

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