Screen Producers Australia (SPA) today welcomed the release of the Screen Australia Drama Report 2021/22, which continues to highlight the volatility of the screen sector with a range of recent factors generating both pressures and opportunities for Australian screen productions and the people and businesses that make them.
While generating a nice top-line result, a lot more needs to be done to address the underlying challenges the sector faces.
The new record for total Australian drama expenditure of $1.15 billion midst an overall total spend of $2.29 billion is welcome, and points to the importance of the Australian screen industry to Australia’s creative economy which is likely to be in total more than four times as large as this drama report captures.
It also demonstrates the capacity of the Australian screen industry to grow rapidly, in response to investment opportunities. SPA believes that conditions are right to capitalise on this growth through increased skills development and an industry plan for well-managed and permanent growth.
SVOD Demonstrates a Move in the Right Direction
SPA also welcomes the increase in spending on drama in 2021/22 by Australian and foreign online streaming services that contributed $186 million to 24 titles, representing a significant step up of investment.
This brings SVOD services even closer to the 20% minimum investment requirement sought by SPA as an ongoing commitment to Australian screen content.
Data is King but Needs Reviewing
For context, SPA notes that these figures capture only one year, so it is important to weigh any record spend against the 5-year averages. SPA also notes that this report is for drama only, and that Australian audiences value diversity of screen content across all genres.
Achieving a consistent and transparent reporting methodology for screen industry data by Screen Australia and the ACMA is an important goal and should be a focus of outcomes associated with the National Cultural Policy under current development.
For example, SPA notes that the figures for Australian VOD drama applied by Screen Australia include titles that are not likely to be considered “Australian” under the definition applied by the industry regulator, the ACMA. SPA believes a consistent framework for the collection and reporting of screen industry data across all platforms of free-to-air, subscription, and streaming services is of critical importance.
Commercial Free to Air Needs to Deliver More
SPA remains concerned about the continued downward trend in hours and investment from commercial free-to-air channels which reflects the damaging deregulation of this sector under the previous government.
These vastly lowered requirements are completely at odds with an expectation that Australians should be able to view a range of well-made content on freely available services that in turn benefit from industry protection through the anti-siphoning scheme as well as the use of public assets in the form of spectrum for their delivery to audiences.
This harmful deregulation also hastened the trend for the collapse in the number of series/serials produced by commercial broadcasters, with Home and Away (Seven Networks) and Neighbours (Network 10), providing the bulk of series and serials hours in this report.
With the final episode of Neighbours having gone to air, this leaves continuing challenges for our sector which has benefitted from the training ground that long-running drama programs made for commercial television have traditionally provided. These programs, as well as children’s content, have key roles in developing talent in front of and behind the camera and our sector needs both to continue to ensure a healthy sector with key skills is maintained.
The Results for Children’s Content are Disastrous
The result for children’s content is again disastrous with only one title across a whole year being generated by commercial television businesses, and one by SVOD services despite all these businesses supplying Australian children with thousands of hours of foreign children’s content. Urgent regulation across these platforms is needed if we want to ensure our children can dream Australian dreams.
Our National Broadcasters: Steady and Critical
The ABC has provided the only respite here doing all the heavy lifting for children’s content and together with SBS, continues to fund a strong backbone of Australian drama series. The ongoing delivery of steady investment in our sector by ABC, SBS and NITV continues to demonstrate how important it is for the Australian Government to provide ongoing, stable, transparent, and appropriate levels of funding to our national broadcasters.
Feature Films Have Significant Challenges Hidden by the Top Line Data
The Drama Report also highlights that the number of Australian feature films that are being made has dropped significantly being well below the five-year average and expenditure associated with a handful of very large budget films mask the ongoing challenges this part of our sector faces both in finance and distribution.
SPA is also concerned about the drop in features with budgets of less than $1 million (down from 13% to 8%) and less than $5 million (down from 52% to 33%). While this is partly a reflection of inflationary pressures in the film industry, SPA believes it is important that cost doesn’t become a barrier to new, independent productions to ensure we continue to see a diversity of stories on screens.
An Urgent Need for Terms of Trade
SPA’s most significant concern though is that the commercial deals that underpin the expenditure captured in this report on Australian-created stories are increasingly disastrous for Australian businesses and creators.
Without a “terms of trade” framework, Australian producers are losing creative control and ownership of valuable IP in the titles they create – this needs to be fixed as a priority.
Link to drama report HERE
Media Release – Screen Producers Australia
