You’ve seen them on SBS.
Documentaries on Titanic, Egypt, Hitler, and plenty of shows with Secrets in the title.
TV Tonight has asked SBS Head of Network Programming Peter Andrews to draw back the curtain on some of its programming strategies and reveal why they work so well with audiences.
‘Secrets’ in TV titles
PA: It is no secret that it’s an alluring, provocative word that from our audience perspective creates this sense of ‘What is going on here? Am I going to learn something that I don’t know, is it something I can tell my friends?’ We’ve had many, many series that actually have come to us that are already titled ‘Secrets Of.’ Channel Four in the UK used to have a strand called Secret History, which we always admired from a distance. But we’ve always done our own version of that.
We listen to what the audience say, and they love this style of content. So we’re going to always try and bring them content that gives a new perspective or new discovery.
In this world of flying through the EPG and finding something that you want to watch, you see something like Secrets of Aldi or Secrets of Titanic.
Titanic
PA: Clearly, there’s an enduring popularity around the story of the Titanic. But we only go into these stories if there’s a new perspective. We don’t want to retell the story in the same way. At markets like Real Screen we will have conversations with producers who are tapped into universities and experts who are really obsessed in this area of content and who come up with new evidence or new technology to retell these stories. That’s the point where we will be involved, because we understand that these stories have broad appeal.
There’s actually cultural significance around stories like Titanic or ancient Egypt so technological advancements give us a new way to tell those stories.
Personally, I think that there’s also a bit of nostalgia and, sadly, comfort viewing in this sort of content. They’re familiar topics that the audience probably know and love, and it can almost provide a sense of comfort to viewers when they come into a show. It gives them a sense of ‘Okay, I can watch this’ and not have to worry about what is going on in the world.
You’ll observe a lot of other networks are going back to what used to work…. for SBS we want to provide a bit of comfort, but also really strong Australian stories that connect the audience to us and our purpose.
Egypt
PA: There is a mystique around Egypt and there are so many Egyptologists…. the amount of experts in this space is incredible. There are specialists in this field that can earn a living continually finding new stories, new evidence and new technologies to tell these stories. So if the audience keep wanting and asking for it, we listen to them. We absolutely do. If we’re getting feedback from our audience saying, ‘You’re going there too much’, we will adapt and evolve. But we’re not getting that and we’ll continue to deliver.
Mind you, it’s not that easy. We don’t just go down a shopping aisle and pick up a show on Egypt. We have to spend a lot of time with production companies that engage experts in the field, university-based, a lot of them European-based, who have this knowledge and are bringing the new stories to life.
Railways
PA: What we’ve noticed is that post-pandemic the cost of travel has increased. So maybe we’re providing our audience with stories that they can vicariously get involved in … maybe I’d call it privileged access for our audience, to armchair travel. It’s exploring different destinations, but also we’re going back in time. We’ve done two series now, Ancient Egypt by Train and the Ottoman Empire by Train. Those two series uniquely going back in time, discovering ancient history through a mode of transport has resonated so well with our audience.
Hitler
PA: We see the audience respond to that content, and I suppose it’s very close to our charter and our purpose about education and understanding tragedies and the horrific times of our world. But there is a level of intrigue with our audience that want to understand what happened.
You know, when I came to SBS, I asked the same question. Clearly the audience is still intrigued in this sadly, tragic time, whether it’s Hitler-based content or it’s World War II content.
As we watch our audience grow or age, new audiences come in. We find that we’ve been able to surface that content On Demand in different ways than we do on linear, and find a different audience that watches that…. History as a genre rates.
Split coding titles in the EPG
PA: SBS World News is a one hour bulletin from 6:30 to 7:30 and at 7pm the ABC have their news bulletin. So I’m not giving away any commercially-sensitive information by saying we are really keen to understand what happens between those two half hours.
Renaming acquired titles
PA: We’ve always done it to create an opportunity for the audience to find content easier. So it’s a discoverability thing in the EPG. We changed Inside Aldi to Secrets of Aldi, because we do see a noticeable difference. We’ve done testing, where Secrets has helped with discoverability. But that creates a conundrum for us now. As we’re moving into discoverability across all platforms, it’s really difficult for us to change titles now to create a hookier EPG title…. if a viewer is trying to search, they may not find it as much as with its original title.
Why do dramas often screen On Demand before linear broadcast?
PA: We understand there’s a younger demographic who are clearly watching content on digital or On Demand, and they’ve been spoiled for choice by our very amazing friends in the streaming industry who release content as a box set. So audiences are expecting a certain release of content. Having said that, a lot of the streamers are moving to weekly releases rather than just dropping the whole box set.
So we’re watching how audiences are consuming content. And by releasing content on SBS On Demand first, it gives us the ability to think about how the audience are consuming … having a sort first-mover advantage in the Free to Air space is something that we’re toying with. We’ve always wanted to test / measure / learn.
It’s not always foreign language that we do this with. We look at the content through the eyes of the audience and how they want to consume it.
The other thing is, by dropping a series ahead of linear telecast it can create a bit of buzz. People talk about it. We’ve noticed that, which is great. Also, and this is the geeky side of things, it gives us the ability to look at the data and go, ‘Did the audience complete that series? Did they finish every episode? What were the completion rates like?’ I love all that stuff. It gives us the drop off points, the demographic preferences and all that stuff.
And then finally, it does create an extended lifespan for the content. You can drop it On Demand. They can release on linear, and get a bit of a spike On Demand after you do the linear drop. So it extends this sort of, ‘cradle to grave’ use of content for our audience -from when we get it to when it expires in the time we have the content.
EXCLUSIVE: 2025 Documentaries
PA: Next year, we have four new feature-length documentaries.
We’re doing Sinkholes, Bermuda Triangle, Stonehenge and Loch Ness. These four topics are going to be feature length documentaries as a co-production with Channel Four in the UK, and we are going out with these in about February, March next year.
Each comes with a specific new angle, new evidence, new technology.
So why do we do it? It’s because we keep getting new ways to tell these stories that are enduring with our audience.
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