SBS Viceland launches with a 4-day old Vice News Tonight bulletin

The SBS and I may have a different definition of ‘fast-tracked’, it seems.

SBS Viceland, which took over the SBS2 airwaves yesterday afternoon, has launched and it looks promising. I think the SBS is smart to take advantage of Viceland content as opposed to running another digital channel that plays re-runs of The Office and Community. People complaining about the US-centric tone of the Viceland network obviously haven’t yet noticed that the ABC runs just as much content from the UK without anyone ever batting an eye, and also that every other digital channel is just a 24/7 feed of Mash and Seinfeld. I’d much rather watch a fresh, quirky US documentary from Vice rather than another re-run of QI on the ABC.

With that said there still are some odd parts when you look at the channel’s first line-up. HBO’s Vice News Tonight, a 20-minute news bulletin from Vice, which airs on American cable television, is airing on SBS Viceland with a hefty delay. Last night’s episode, for example, described Trump’s meeting with Obama as an event which happened “today”. It actually aired in the US as a Thursday, November 10 episode, according to HBO’s website. The SBS has conveniently cut out the bulletin’s date from Vice News Tonight’s opening credits, leaving viewers with no context when it comes to the unfortunate delay.

That’s not to say the content of Vice News Tonight isn’t great. I’m beyond happy that SBS is broadcasting that show, for free too! And it’s great to see a fresh take on the nightly news bulletin, with SBS even potentially re-dubbing the episodes for the Australian channel with an Australian voice-over talent. Though it is still a little weird to see the less evergreen stories running on such an extreme delay without much warning or notice. Vice News Tonight’s other feature-like news stories fit in better with the global version of the program, but still occasionally reference ‘current’ events which are now out-of-date. It’s also weird because, unless SBS is shuffling HBO’s broadcast around, the channel could air the Tuesday bulletin, which comes out 11:30AM Sydney time, that night. Instead the broadcaster is re-dubbing and delaying each episode days later.

SBS’s own live news show, The Feed, may serve as a remedy to this, being hosted from SBS’s Australian studios just as it was on SBS2 at 7:30PM. Vice News Tonight airs on SBS Viceland at 7PM weeknights.