Globalising the local in children’s television for the post-network era: How Disney+ and BBC Studios helped Bluey the Australian cattle dog jump the national fence

Abstract

Online television services are changing the way television is funded, produced and experienced by its national and global audiences, with profound cultural implications. The case study presented here of Australian production company Ludo Studio and the animated series Bluey provides valuable insights into the increasingly complex interactions between the local and the global in television production, and the cultural counterflows they can engender. Television made for online distribution can encompass national policy settlements, funding bodies and public service media as well as globally oriented distribution arrangements on SVODs such as Disney +, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Drawing on interview material with Bluey’s key creatives, this research identifies how globalising influences are both shaping and amplifying the local in children’s television production cultures.

Keywords

animation children’s television Disney+globalisation Netflix online television

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) (1983) Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act, No. 6. Australia: ABC. Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2018C00079 (accessed 7 July 2020).

ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) (2019) Australian Broadcasting Corporation Annual Report 2019. Sydney: ABC.

ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) (2020) ABC Kids’ Bluey wins International Emmy. Available at: https://about.abc.net.au/press-releases/abc-kids-bluey-wins-international-emmy-kids-award/ (accessed 21 May 2020).

ACMA (Australian Communications and Media Authority) (2017) Children’s Television Viewing and Multi-screen Behaviour: Analysis of 2005–16 OzTAM Audience Data and 2017 Survey of Parents, Carers and Guardians. Sydney: ACMA.

ACTF (Australian Children’s Television Foundation) (2017) Australian and Children’s Content Review Submission. Melbourne: ACTF.

Ampere Analysis (2020) Disney lays out battle plans. Available at: https://www.ampereanalysis.com/report/profile-disney-lays-out-battle-plans (accessed 21 May 2020).

Blackiston

(2019) Content: How the ABC engineered a viral success with a show about going viral. Available at: https://mumbrella.com.au/content-how-the-abc-engineered-a-viral-success-with-a-show-about-going-viral-598010 (accessed 21 May 2020).

Bryant

(2007) The Children’s Television Community. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Bryman

(2004) The Disneyization of Society. London: Sage.

10.

Conlan

(2018) BBC in bid to win back teen viewers with ‘rite of passage’ box sets. The Guardian, 4 July. Available at: https:// www.theguardian.com/media/2018/jul/03/bbc-teen-viewers-box-sets-iplayer-netflix (accessed 1 June 2020).

11.

Cunningham

(1992) Framing Culture: Criticism and Policy in Australia. Sydney, NSW: Allen & Unwin.

12.

Cunningham

Jacka

(1996) Australian Television and International Mediascapes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

13.

Curtin

Sanson

(2016) Precarious creativity: Global media local labor. In: Curtin

Sanson

(eds) Precarious Creativity: Global Media Local Labor. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, pp. 1–18.

14.

Foster

(2019) What does Amazon’s kids shift mean for producers? Available at: https://kidscreen.com/2019/06/20/what-does-amazons-kids-shift-mean-for-producers/ (accessed 31 May 2020).

15.

Garcia

(2019) Hasbro gets Peppa Pig, and lots more, with $4 billion Entertainment One acquisition. Available at: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/hasbro-gets-peppa-pig-and-lots-more-with-4-billion-entertainment-one-acquisition-2019-08-23 (accessed 21 January 2020).

16.

Goldsmith

Ward

O’Regan

(2010) Local Hollywood: Global Film Production and the Gold Coast. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press.

17.

Götz

Lemish

(2012) Sexy Girls, Heroes and Funny Losers: Gender Representations in Children’s TV around the World. New York: Peter Lang.

18.

Johnson

(2019) Online TV. London: Routledge.

19.

Lemish

(2010) Screening Gender on Children’s Television: The Views of Producers Around the World. London: Routledge.

20.

Livingstone

Mascheroni

Staksrud

(2018) European research on children’s internet use: Assessing the past and anticipating the future. New Media & Society 20(3): 1103–1122.

21.

Lobato

(2019) Netflix Nations. New York: New York University Press.

22.

Lobato

Scarlata

(2019) Australian Content in SVOD Catalogs: Availability and Discoverability. Melbourne: RMIT University.

23.

Matheson

Henderson

Bredin

(2012) Canadian Television Text and Context. Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

24.

Meades

(2020) ABC loses $783m funding since 2014 when Coalition made its first cuts. The Guardian, 4 May. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/may/04/abc-loses-793m-funding-since-2014-when-coalition-made-its-first-cuts-report (accessed 1 June 2020).

25.

Ole

(2011) Marriage of convenience? Public service broadcasters’ cross-national partnerships in factual television. International Communication Gazette 73(3): 181–197.

26.

O’Regan

(1993) Australian Television Culture. Australian Cultural Studies series. St Leonards, NSW: Allen and Unwin.

27.

Pasquier

Simões

Kredens

(2012) Agents of mediation and sources of safety awareness: A comparative overview. In: Livingstone

Haddon

Görzig

(eds) Children, Risk and Safety on the Internet. Bristol: Polity Press.

28.

Pecora

(1998) The Business of Children’s Television. New York: Guilford Press.

29.

Potter

(2015) Creativity, Culture and Commerce: Producing Australian Children’s Television with Public Value. Bristol: Intellect.

30.

Potter

(2017a) Thunderbirds are go: Re-booting female characters in action adventure animation. In: Lemish

Gotz

(eds) Beyond the Stereotypes? Images of Boys and Girls, and their Consequences. Gothenberg: Nordicom, pp. 65–74.

31.

Potter

(2017b) Funding contemporary children’s television: How digital convergence encourages retro reboots. International Journal on Media Management 19(2): 108–122.

32.

Potter

(2020) Producing Children’s Television in the On Demand Age. Bristol: Intellect.

33.

Rowe

Turner

Waterton

(2018) Making Culture: Commercialisation, Transnationalism, and the State of ‘Nationing’ in Contemporary Australia. Abingdon: Taylor and Francis.

34.

Roy

Morgan

(2019) Almost 14 million Australians have subscription or Pay TV. Press release, 1 July. Available at: http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/8036-svod-netflix-foxtel-stan-fetch-youtube-amazon-pay-tv-may-2019-201907010501 (accessed 7 July 2020).

35.

Roy

Morgan

(2020) Disney Plus attracts over 1.8 million in first 3 months. Press release, 31 March. Available at: http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/8348-subscription-pay-tv-services-february-2020-202003300559 (accessed 1 June 2020)

36.

Screen Australia (2018) Annual Report. Sydney: Screen Australia.

37.

Screen Australia (2019a) The Drama Report. Sydney: Screen Australia.

38.

Screen Australia (2019b) Annual Report. Sydney: Screen Australia.

39.

Screen Australia (2019c) Corporate Plan 2019–2023. Sydney: Screen Australia.

40.

Screen Australia (2020) Supporting Australian Stories on Our Screens: Options Paper. Sydney: Screen Australia.

41.

Spangler

(2019) Netflix spent $12 billion on content in 2018: Analysts expect that to grow to $15 billion this year. Variety Magazine, 18 January.

42.

Steemers

(2010) Creating Preschool Television. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

43.

Styles

(2020) Disney has high hopes for Bluey as Heeler family earns its stripes in US. Sydney Morning Herald, 19 January. Available at: https://www.smh.com.au/culture/tv-and-radio/disney-has-high-hopes-for-bluey-as-heeler-family-earns-its-stripes-in-us-20191111-p539lr.html (accessed 5 March 2020).

44.

Torre

(2018) Australian Animation: An International History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

45.

Turner

(2016) The nation-state and media globalisation: Has the nation-state returned – or did it never leave? In: Flew

Iosifidis

Steemers

(eds) Global Media and National Policies: The Return of the State. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

46.

Turner

(2018) Television: Commercialization, the decline of ‘nationing’ and the status of the media field. In: Rowe

Turner

Waterton

(eds) Making Culture: Commercialisation, Transnationalism, and the State of ‘Nationing’ in Contemporary Australia. New York: Routledge.

47.

Ward

Potter

(2009) H20: Just add branding: Producing high-quality children’s drama for multi-channel environments. Media International Australia 133: 31–42.

48.

Wasko

(2001) Understanding Disney: The Manufacture of Fantasy. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

49.

Williams

(2019) Top dogs: The ABC’s ‘Bluey’ and Australian children’s animation. Metro Magazine: Media & Education Magazine 202(Oct.): 38–43.

50.

Yoon

Malecki

(2010) Cartoon planet: Worlds of production and global production networks in the animation industry. Industrial and Corporate Change 19(1): 239–271.