SBS channel WorldWatch has garnered little to no audience eight months after launch, and is in fact, losing audience, shows data from TV ratings provider OzTAM.
The broadcaster’s sixth channel went live with $29 million federal funding injections but has performed terribly with negligible viewership and an average share of 0 per cent due to the small number of viewers during 6pm and midnight which is the peak TV watching period, according to the report.
After releasing the channel last May, SBS managing director James Taylor said that the goal was to serve “small, but important” audiences, the firt part of which is true.
WorldWatch provides international news bulletins from broadcasters like South Korea’s YTN, France’s 20 Heurer, and Portugal’s RTP. It also broadcasts Arabic and Mandarin news bulletins produced by a staff of 18 people at the Sydney studios.
SBS director of news and current affairs, Mandi Wicks, says the viewership is “stable and growing”.
“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,” she says. “Unlike other TV channels the format doesn’t lend itself to building an audience over the course of an evening; rather a smaller number of loyal viewers will tune in to watch their language bulletin then dip out, but we believe the offering is an important one.”
Data from OzTAM claims that the channel is viewed by “hundreds of thousands” of viewers every month, but the information is based on people who watch for more than five minutes at a time.
The multicultural broadcaster does not believe OzTAM’s panel measurement system accurately represents its audience and, unlike other shows, the viewers don’t tend to stay to watch the next scheduled program. This affects share of audience figures because viewers don’t stay on WorldWatch for a long-time when compared with other channels.
Data provided by SBS from another measurement provider, Neilsen, says that 71 per cent of the Arabic community engage with SBS Arabic24 and 67 per cent of the Mandarin-speaking population engage with SBS Mandarin.
The number of people watching the bulletins are in fact a lot smaller than the potential audience in Australia which is around 610,000 Mandarin speakers and 350,000 Arabic speakers.
Taylor insisted last May that audience was “the metric that matters”.
“It also matters commercially because we can reach a small, important high-quality and growing audience,” he said in an interview about the channel.
People inside SBS now say WorldWatch is not supposed to be an advertising ploy. Rather, it is an opportunity to move low-audience bulletins to a dedicated channel and free up space on its previous home, SBS Viceland.
A 2018 efficiency view conducted by former News Corp boss Peter Tonagh and former media regulator Richard Bean said SBS spent more than $35 million on its multi-channels with about 120 full-time equivalent staff. The review recognised the importance of multi-channels, but recommended a reduction in channels and a bigger focus on SBS On Demand.
The decision to launch a linear news bulletin when all broadcasters are losing audiences on their main channel was risky.
But starting a channel to build connections with different ethnic communities by speaking to them in their language is baked into the SBS charter and the channel attempts to do so.
Despite what data has to say, SBS believes the channel and its bulletins are a success so far.
“It’s early days but the channel and offering are heading in the right direction,” Wicks said.
