SBS has a new content plan to speak to all Australians
The head of SBS corporate strategy has laid out an ambitious vision to be able to deliver bespoke content in the language of any user’s choice, enmeshing the specialist broadcaster in the daily media diet of foreign-language speaking Australians.
SBS head of corporate strategy Sarah Yassien and design honcho Andy Wong. The special broadcaster was a finalist in the AFR’s Most Innovative Company awards in the media and marketing category. Peter Rae
SBS was a finalist in the Australian Financial Review’s Most Innovative Companies awards in the media and marketing category. It was recognised for its digital transformation strategy, which has seen the broadcaster undertake wide-scale changeson its constrained budget.
As part of new changes, visitors to SBS online products – such as its website and SBS On Demand streaming platform – are now asked what language they speak in pop-up prompts. And with a click, the text and subtitles can be seamlessly switched to one of more than 60 languages. These language features are not found anywhere else in the Australian media.
The 2021 census found that 5.6 million people or 22 per cent of Australians, reported using a language other than English at home, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, up from 4.8 million in 2016.
Sarah Yassien, head of corporate strategy, said the objective will be for SBS systems to recognise the exact user and shift to that person’s preferred language without asking.
“What we want to be able to do is wherever you move around the SBS ecosystem, it will remember the stuff you’re interested in,” Yassien says.
“Did you listen to Italian radio? Did you look at a recipe in Italian? By the time you get to any content around the network, in very simple ways,
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