SBS claims audiences at 50-year high
SBS is reaching the biggest audience in its 50-year history as it prepares for federal election coverage it claims is “critical to the health of democracy”.
Managing director James Taylor spoke to Mumbrella on Monday morning, as SBS begins to ramp up its national election coverage.
The station is broadcasting content in 60 languages across linear and digital platforms, with short-form videos, podcasts, rolling news blogs, live debates, documentaries, and election-focused episodes of The Point, Living Black and Insight going out to what Taylor is claiming is the largest audience in the station’s history.
“We’re actually bigger now than we have been in our entire 50-year history, which is something that I’m very proud of,” he said, pointing to the station’s reach across its own platforms, as well as on third-party streamers.
SBS did not provide Mumbrella with a combined reach number across its platforms to back up the claim. Over 141 million hours of TV were watched on SBS On Demand last financial year — a nominal drop from FY2023, which included FIFA World Cup numbers — while videos on social channels garnered more than 1.5 billion views, a 30% increase from the prior year. SBS Audio — generally an aural medium — also saw average monthly video views increased by 75% year-on-year on third-party social channels, to 5.8 million.
SBS managing director James Taylor
“There are very few legacy media organisations that are larger today than they were before the creation of global streaming competition,” he said. “It’s a story to be proud of.”
Taylor said the numbers show “Australians are finding more value in SBS as time goes by, which is what you want to hear when you’re a public broadcaster.”
Another thing a public broadcaster wants is more funding. Last week, ABC chair Kim Williams called for more government investment, bemoaning the fact it receives a smaller percentage of Commonwealth funding in 2025 than in the year 2000, yet “are called upon to do much more with it.”
While SBS will see its funding rise by $8.8 million in the next financial year — to $359.1 million — with $6 million annual bumps projected until 2029, Taylor agrees more funding would be handy.
“I think the challenge for us — for any legacy media organisation, whether you’re commercial or public — is that there is an expansion of costs associated with serving audiences on the platforms that matter to them,” he said. Unlike the ABC, the SBS can court commercial revenue, which sits at around 30% of its funding.
“We would love more government support,” he said. “That is always something we will seek to secure in Canberra. We are also of the view we have to make the best we can with the money we’ve got.
“We see it at a time of an explosion of disinformation, a fragmentation of audiences across other platforms, many of whom aren’t trusted, and the displacement of trusted credentialled news from those platforms.
“We would always love more money to reach more Australians. Australian communities are vulnerable. There are a bunch of local and international forces which are driving people apart rather than together. We see our mission as critical to the health of democracy and the health of the society.”
Part of this mission involves hosting a series of “election exchanges” in key seats Parramatta and Broadmeadows later this month.
“That places us front and centre in some of those battleground electorates and allows us to bring together candidates with community members such that they can hear and see the candidates’ offers to them in their local areas.” The candidates will also be interviewed in multiple languages, Taylor explains, “to make sure their message is getting out quickly to constituents.”
Taylor says the SBS is “very focused on presenting pluralistic views” across its entire election coverage.
“There is no house view at SBS,” he said. “We want to ensure that candidates and community members can share their perspectives, and we want to make sure that we are sharing those perspectives freely across all of our platforms, such that voters can make an informed and independent decision themselves when it comes to polling day.”
Taylor said “multilingualism has always been at the heart of our offering for 50 years now,” but with the preponderance of languages other than English, the station’s importance has risen.
“I believe we are the only broadcaster locally that is genuinely focused on not only the delivery of multilingual content, but also placing First Nations’ stories and perspectives first,” he said.
With this growing audience comes what Taylor dubs “the most comprehensive election offer we’ve had.”
“Voluminous content, all designed to help not to tell people what to think, but to help them think about the issues facing them and help them make an informed choice when polling day arrives,” he said.
“As our platform gets bigger, it’s a real privilege, but also a weighty responsibility to make sure that we don’t do anything during that period, other than amplify why we’re deserving of our audience’s trust.”
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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So they want MORE taxpayer money? If ratings are so fantastic why aren’t they getting advertisers to pay more? Cause it’s all BS that’s why. They operate across so many platforms they can hide how badly they are doing in reality by these large aggregates and millions of ‘viewing hours’ that no one understands let alone can cost for ad purposes.
And THEY reckon they are good for democracy? They are not even transparent enough to show us – the public that pay for 70% of SBS – who is watching or I would imagine NOT watching. SBS is bigger now than ever before? Wow what a surprise – the population has doubled since SBS was launched. Means nothing.
Give us some facts as to WHY we need to increase funding to a media organisation when YouTubers in cupboards are getting millions of views with no gov support whatsoever.
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Ahh yes, the old “we’re critical to democracy” chestnut.. Gimme, gimme, gimme.. 💰💰
It’s the same mantra the ABC uses, along with the classic “without bias or agenda”. As soon as I hear, or read, that slogan I just know it’s coming from a Left Wing, taxpayer funded echo-chamber.
And, as the previous poster commented, if ratings are so good, your advertising revenue should be up too. Maybe the SBS should be converted into a subscription
service, to really tap into all of those new viewers 👌
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