Industrial Free to Air networks spent $1.91b on content material within the 2022 – 2023 monetary yr, down barely on $1.94b the earlier yr.
The numbers have been launched by the Australian Communications and Media Authority of their annual Industrial TV Expenditure Report.
87% of all program expenditure was for Australian content material, a rise of 8% on the earlier yr.
$1.67b was spent on Australian content material -a document quantity. $35m of that was in regional areas, virtually totally in Information & Present Affairs. This marks a 16% enhance in expenditure on regional information.
There have been will increase in Sport, Information & Present Affairs and Mild Leisure: Different.
Australian Grownup Drama slid from $65m in 2021 – 2022 to $49.4m in 2022 – 2023 ,whereas Sport rose from $545m to $635.1m.
Youngsters’s Drama went from $2m to $0 in 12 months.
For the reason that requirement for Youngsters’s content material was scrapped, general spending on Australian Youngsters’s Drama has steadily declined from $11.6 million (2018-19) to $0 (2022-23).
Equally, spending on Australian kids’s different content material (i.e. non-drama) has fallen from $13.2 million (2018-19) to $743,820.00 (2022-23).
An extra $0.24b was spent on Abroad content material.
Free TV Australia:
Free TV CEO Bridget Honest stated: “Offering high quality Australian programming at no cost to all Australians is a part of our DNA. We’re dedicated to bringing Australians the trusted information, dwell and free sport and native leisure programming that they love.
“These numbers are a robust demonstration that Free TV broadcasters see themselves as the house of Australian content material. No different media platform makes the constant funding in our native content material yr in, yr out.
“This degree of funding is a transparent motive why the Australian Authorities ought to make sure that our coverage settings assist the sustainability of the business tv sector. If we’re going to have a Future Made in Australia, a powerful native media business is central to that goal.”
Display screen Producers Australia:
“In the exact same week that we’re listening to in regards to the risk to free-to-air audiences from dropping some sport on their channels, we’ve affirmation that they’re spending little or no on Australian drama packages for Australian youngster audiences,” stated SPA CEO Matthew Deaner.
“Australia’s kids make up 20% of our inhabitants and will have free entry to tales that replicate their lives and tradition.
“The identical social fairness arguments being made round free entry to sport apply equally to free entry to different Australian tradition equivalent to drama packages. If sports activities must be free to look at, so ought to kids’s TV dramas.
“Australia’s anti-siphoning record quantities to important business help to business free-to-air networks as sporting occasions are a key income driver, but there isn’t any reciprocal social obligation for essential Australian youngster audiences.
“Whereas spending on Australian sport, mild leisure, information, and present affairs is trending upwards, spending on Australian grownup drama is declining and has dropped 24% since final yr.
“In some excellent news, it is extremely welcome that spending on Australian documentaries has elevated since 2019-20 and has remained virtually on par with spending on this style this yr as for final.
“SPA has raised issues round kids’s content material a number of instances with the Australian Authorities ever because the earlier Authorities deregulated regulation for business broadcasters in 2019, spending on Australian youngster audiences has continued to drop.
“These new figures are extremely alarming – however in no way stunning. Till there may be extra balanced regulation of economic broadcasters and the more and more dominant streaming platforms, nothing will change for Australian youngster audiences.”
