Michael Ebeid speech at the SBS Upfronts 2018
Tuesday 14 November, 2017
SBS 2018 Upfronts Speech
Michael Ebeid – SBS CEO & Managing Director
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Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the SBS 2018 Upfronts.
We really appreciate you taking the time to join us because we’re very excited to share our new line up with you. Once again, the SBS team has raised the bar to further differentiate our network and give audiences real choice.
To kick things off, I’d first like to acknowledge the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation and pay my respects to their Elders both past and present.
I’d also like to acknowledge our SBS Board members who have joined us this afternoon — it’s great to have you with us.
The media sector has changed significantly over the last five years and I firmly believe that SBS has evolved more than any other network to become Australia’s most agile broadcaster.
Through a clear and defined strategic direction, an innovative approach to content and scheduling and acceleration of our digital services — we’re now operating five distinct channels, two in HD, with extensive in-language services and online offerings – engaging with more Australians, across more platforms than ever before.
SBS remains the only media organisation that lives diversity, not just reflecting it on and off screen but it is ingrained in how we work, our culture, and in the stories and perspectives we explore every day.
This approach gives SBS a genuine point of difference in the cluttered market, and as we adapt to meet the changing needs of audiences and the changing cultural complexity of our nation — it is this that will cement our future growth and relevance.
Today, you’ll hear from some of our team and also from our wonderful talent, and will see that our exciting vision for 2018 will ensure that SBS goes from strength to strength.
I hope you leave today with a sense that SBS’s bold, thought-provoking and distinctive content continues to inspire Australians to understand each other better, with the aim of shifting perceptions and making a difference — both socially and economically.
Our accelerated digital growth in the last twelve months has really struck a chord with audiences:
* SBS’s in-language services remain unrivalled globally, and are vital in helping migrants and emerging communities to navigate life in Australia.
* Whilst live radio programs remain important, our expansion of digital in-language services has delivered massive growth – we now have over 2.5m visitors to SBS Radio’s websites each month, and audiences are downloading over 1.6m podcasts per month.
* SBS On Demand continues to be one of our success stories. Much more than a catch-up service, it’s a channel in its own right and we’re committed to offering all Australians a free premium streaming service that’s really differentiated, now serving over 20 million video views per month.
* And pleasingly, the platform is also bringing younger audiences to the network, with an average age being ten years younger than SBS’s main TV channel.
SBS will continue to build on this success — a result of our passionate culture, lean operations and distinctive storytelling — a formula that is now synonymous with SBS.
You can expect to see an even greater focus on digital innovation with an audience-centric mindset, to really enhance our one-to-one relationships with our audiences, giving them content at their convenience.
* We’ll continue to invest heavily in data to drive effective targeting and deeper engagement, through sophisticated personalisation to improve user experience.
* Our data management platform allows SBS to segment specific target audiences for advertisers to reach across any SBS digital platform.
* Ultimately it’s about knowing your audience and I’m thrilled that we now have nearly 3M registered users on our digital platforms. This data will enable us to make better decisions when it comes to content, digital products and platform delivery.
This success has resulted in recent criticism of SBS, suggesting that we’re disregarding our Charter obligations — and distorting the wider market.
Our Charter states that our principal function is multilingual and multicultural programming, but it’s not our only function. Our acquisition of some general interest, English-language programs with broader appeal is a deliberate strategy to draw in new audiences – so that we can cross-promote SBS’s Charter inspired content — to reach as many Australians as possible.
SBS is being an innovative challenger — doing smarter content deals, deploying smarter digital strategies and adapting to remain relevant. We’re proud of our growth and – certainly not apologetic for our successful strategies — and I guess the criticism is a credit to the teams at SBS who work so hard to deliver content that packs a punch on minimal budgets.
On that note, I’m thrilled to announce today that SBS will build on its heritage of bringing Australians the best international sports with the addition of the French Open, back on free-to-air, to complement our coverage of the US Open.
Besides SBS being the most distinctive media network — our news services are also the most trusted out of the Seven, Nine and 10 Networks, according to the latest Essential NewsPoll — in fact we saw an increase in trust levels over the last year compared to a decline across the commercial networks.
In 2018, SBS’s distinctive programming will continue to reflect, explore and celebrate the diversity of Australia like no other media organisation does, with the broader aim of deepening the understanding of multiculturalism and the value of this diversity to our nation.
Every one of you in in this room is an important stakeholder to SBS, and you’re integral to our success — and I sincerely thank you for your ongoing support.
So enough from me, I’ll now hand you over to Andrew Cook to get the show started.
Thank you.
ENDS.