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World Watch

World Watch, or WorldWatch, is a programming block on SBS and SBS Viceland, and a standalone television channel in Australia, that carries news bulletins from countries around the world. The World Watch service gives viewers the opportunity to see news bulletins in their native language. The majority of these bulletins are produced by public or state broadcasters.

The WorldWatch program began on 24 August 1993 with news bulletins from the People's Republic of China, the United States, Germany and Russia.

In June 2002, SBS launched the SBS World News Channel, providing repeats of aired bulletins on SBS in addition to updated bulletins.

In October 2003, Filipino, Vietnamese and Arabic were added to the World Watch schedule. However, the Vietnamese service was controversial as the broadcaster chosen was the government-controlled VTV4, which was seen as deeply offensive and seen as propaganda to many Vietnamese Australians who fled after the Vietnam War. It was quickly removed on 17 October.

In 2009, SBS replaced the World News Channel with SBS 2 (now SBS Viceland), and the bulletins also moved to the new channel under the "World Watch" banner. Bulletins air from 6:00am to 6:00pm, whereas SBS airs the bulletins between 5:00am and 1:30pm.

In 2010, SBS added three new languages: Portuguese, Urdu and Hindi.

In October 2015, SBS added eleven new bulletins to the World Watch schedule: African English, Armenian, Bengali, Bosnian, Nepali, Punjabi, Romanian, Sinhalese, Somali, Tamil and Thai; and created an English language line-up on SBS, which moved the Cantonese, Japanese, Korean and Mandarin bulletins from SBS to SBS 2.

Usually, before a WorldWatch bulletin, an intro animation revealing the city and country of origin of the bulletin, sometimes also including the full title of the bulletin, is shown, as well as a disclaimer, which, following the previously mentioned backlash over the choice of Vietnamese news broadcasts, explains that the bulletin may not reflect the network's standards and may include distressing content.

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