The World News began as a half-hour bulletin, first seen in 1980, soon after the launch of the then-named Channel 0/28.
George Donikian was the service's first presenter; veteran newsreader
Mary Kostakidis began reading the weekend news in 1986. The network's long-running investigative documentary series
Dateline started in 1984. Closed captioning for the SBS World News television service was introduced in March 1997. In 2002, a digital-only
World News Channel was launched, aimed at providing a comprehensive foreign-language news channel, mainly showing additional bulletins already seen in SBS' morning WorldWatch timeslot. No English-language bulletins were shown on the channel until its demise in 2009.
World News Australia was relaunched in its current one-hour format in January 2007 taking over the timeslot of
Toyota World Sport and signing
CNN correspondent
Stan Grant to co-present alongside
Mary Kostakidis. The merger between the two programs took place as a result of a claimed drop-off in viewers between programs, when a solid block of advertising would be shown. As a result, the relaunch saw the introduction of commercial breaks during the bulletin. The new bulletin format has since lost viewers, with the late bulletin often out-rating the flagship 6:30pm bulletin; most of this has been attributed to the perceived commercialisation of the bulletin by the SBS Board. A dispute between longtime presenter
Mary Kostakidis and the network arose in August 2007, when she walked out of the network in frustration at what she saw as increased commercialisation at the network, and a shift away from the original values of both the news service and the station in general. It was widely speculated that Kostakidis' contract stipulated she would be the network's main news presenter, and maintain editorial control over bulletins, somewhat altered by
World News Australia's change in format. Kostakidis took legal action against SBS for breach of contract. In 2009, World News Channel was replaced with
SBS Two which became
SBS Viceland in 2016. In February 2014,
World News Australia was relaunched with new graphics along with a name,
SBS World News. In 2017,
SBS World News was upgraded with a new set and improved website. The program can now be streamed on the SBS News website as well as the SBS News app. ==Theme music==