SBS World News - History

History

The World News began as a half-hour bulletin, first seen in 1980, soon after the launch of the then-named Channel 0/28. George Donikian was the service's first presenter; veteran newsreader Mary Kostakidis began reading the weekend news in 1986. The network's long-running investigative documentary series Dateline started in 1984.

Closed captioning for the World News was introduced in March 1997.

In 2002, a digital-only World News Channel was launched, aimed at providing a comprehensive foreign-language news channel, mainly showing additional bulletins already seen in SBS' morning WorldWatch timeslot. No English-language bulletins were shown on the channel until its demise in 2009.

World News Australia was relaunched in its current one-hour format in January 2007, taking over the timeslot of Toyota World Sport and signing CNN correspondent Stan Grant to co-present alongside Mary Kostakidis. The merger between the two programs took place as a result of a claimed drop-off in viewers between programs, when a solid block of advertising would be shown. As a result, the relaunch saw the introduction of commercial breaks during the bulletin.

The new bulletin format has since lost viewers, with the late bulletin often out-rating the flagship 6.30 bulletin; most of this has been attributed to the perceived commercialisation of the bulletin by the SBS Board.

A dispute between longtime presenter Mary Kostakidis and the network arose in August 2007, when she walked out of the network in frustration at what she saw as increased commercialisation at the network, and a shift away from the original values of both the news service and the station in general. It was widely speculated that Kostakidis' contract stipulated she would be the network's main news presenter, and maintain editorial control over bulletins, somewhat altered by World News Australia's change in format. Kostakidis took legal action against SBS for breach of contract.

In 2009, World News Channel was replaced with SBS Two and the channel now simulcasts the 6:30pm edition of World News Australia along with SBS One, although foreign-language news still dominates its morning and afternoon schedule.

Since the early 1990s, the World News and World News Australia themes have been written by Australian composer Nigel Westlake.

Former presenters of World News Australia include Mary Kostakidis and Stan Grant, who both departed in 2007, Amrita Cheema who resigned in June 2008 and Ben Fajzullin who resigned in 2010. In October 2010, it was announced that Neena Mairata would leave SBS due to cost-cutting measures.