Supporting children’s drama in the on demand age: Assessing the efficacy of forty years of Australian policy frameworks and funding schemes

Abstract

This is a case study of 40 years of policy approaches in Australian children’s television during which the children’s television production ecology was profoundly altered by new distribution technologies. For decades Australia used quotas, subsidies and screen organisation The Australian Children’s Television Foundation to safeguard supplies of children’s television including drama. Digitisation has caused enormous industrial disruption while delivering abundant children’s content on demand. The article calls for new approaches to supporting local children’s screen content through increased funding of public service media rather than the ad hoc distribution of resources to an organisation without direct pathways to audiences.

For nearly 40 years Australia had a strong commitment to children’s television, including domestically produced drama. Governments used the twin policy levers of content quotas on the country’s three advertiser-funded broadcasters and direct and indirect funding subsidies to safeguard supplies of children’s programmes including Australian-originated drama. Since 2009 public service broadcaster (PSB) the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has also provided a broad range of children’s programmes through its children’s channel now known as ABCME. Leading screen organisation the Australian Children’s Television Foundation (ACTF) has also played a vital role in securing supplies of children’s programmes by funding, producing, and marketing content including domestically produced drama since 1982. In 2021, however, the Australian government removed children’s content quotas from all three commercial broadcasters as part of broader attempts at screen policy reform. Very few children were watching the programmes made especially for them on these linear channels, so the quotas’ removal impacted the production sector much more than audiences.

In this account of how Australian cultural policy effectively supported the domestic production of children’s television from the late 1970s, the centrality of the ACTF and policy instrument The Children’s Television Standards (CTS) to these arrangements is considered from the vantage point of 2023. Their intersections with Australian screen media industries first in analogue conditions of content scarcity and later digital abundance are also traced. The following research questions frame this analysis which is grounded in media industries research (Herbert et al., 2020) and draws on interviews with children’s screen practitioners as well as industry press, screen agency reports and historical policy documents:

• How effective were the ACTF and the Children’s Television Standards (CTS) in safeguarding supplies of identifiably Australian children’s television in analogue regimes characterised by content scarcity?

• How did the ACTF adapt and encourage innovation with the arrival of digitisation?

• What do 40 years of Australian policy approaches reveal about how best to support and distribute domestically produced children’s drama for national audiences?

Funded by the federal government and each Australian state and territory, ¹ the ACTF was established as a non-profit company in 1982 when mass audiences were the norm for linear broadcasters and children’s programmes were in scarce supply. Initially set up as a production house to supply children’s drama to broadcasters so they could fill their newly introduced children’s drama quotas, the ACTF extended its activities to sales of its own and other companies’ children’s programmes from 1998. The organisation’s sales efforts have seen Australian children’s drama distributed in multiple territories such as Europe, Asia, the Middle East and US and have contributed to the genre attracting large audiences outside Australia including on the BBC children’s services. The CTS were first introduced in 1979 and obliged Australia’s commercial broadcasters to become the largest investors in domestically produced children’s programmes through the use of content quotas including for drama. They also contained requirements for national cultural specificity and high production values to compel broadcasters to prioritise drama made specifically for Australian children that the market would not otherwise support. 40 years later the ACTF operates in digital regimes characterised by fragmentation and abundance in which children’s status as an audience has irrevocably changed. The quid pro quo basis of Australian cultural policy, that commercial broadcasters fulfil certain cultural obligations including to the child audience in return for access to scarce spectrum and protection from new market entrants (Bosland, 2007), has been completely eroded. Digitisation ended spectrum scarcity and audiences of any age can access drama from all over the world on streaming services for which the capacity to aggregate audiences globally provides significant economies of scale (Lotz, 2021). Since its inception, the ACTF has shown itself to be highly adaptable in the face of the changing industrial and regulatory circumstances of children’s television. These qualities, the organisation’s unusually broad remit and the 2021 Australian government’s decision to provide it and not the ABC with an extra $A20m in funding over 2 years make Australian policy approaches a valuable case study when considering ways to support domestic children’s screen content. As European countries and the UK adapt their strategies of content creation and distribution, ² Australia’s attempts at policy reform amid industrial transformation yield useful insights.

The ACTF has unrivalled credentials in Australian children’s television, including four decades as a producer and marketer of award-winning drama and influential policy advocate. Nonetheless, this analysis reveals that in the current digital environment the ACTF’s lack of a direct pathway to audiences is a weakness as children’s viewing fragments across new platforms and services after a period of sustained industrial disruption. Further, television’s digitisation and the distinctive affordances of SVODs have rendered the policy frameworks within which the ACTF used to work effectively, including the CTS, unfit for purpose. One digital innovation, however, the ABC’s children’s channel ABCME has multiple distribution pathways on its linear platform, digital apps and the ABC’s streaming platform iView. It therefore has considerable advantages as a publisher of age-specific Australian content that has the potential to be discoverable by local audiences regardless of their socioeconomic status. Funded by government, the ABC is also largely protected from the economic challenges digitisation brought for commercial broadcasters.

Early broadcast television and the conditions of scarcity in children’s television

Australia is a medium sized, English language television market with three advertiser-funded and two public service broadcasters, and a range of national and global subscriber-supported, streaming services. With domestically produced content historically vulnerable to English language imports, the country has a longstanding screen policy agenda of cultural nationalism (Turner, 2018). Until 2021, this involved the use of Australian content quotas on advertiser-funded broadcasters ³ including specific sub quotas for drama, children’s programmes and documentaries. Sub-quotas operated alongside funding subsidies for these forms of commissioned television that are much more expensive for broadcasters than English language imports. Australia’s principal PSB, the ABC is an important source of children’s domestic drama commissions but the CTS and their quotas only applied to Australia’s commercial broadcasters. The ABC is bound instead by its Charter, which requires it to ‘provide content that contributes to a sense of national identity, reflects the cultural diversity of the Australian community and takes account of the multicultural character of the Australian community’ (ABC, 1983).

As in many countries, the technological and economic conditions of early broadcast television in Australia led to scarcity in children’s television. This was largely because the child audience was of little value to the country’s commercial broadcasters competing for mass audiences to sell to advertisers and hours-based restrictions around advertising to children (Potter, 2015). Recognising the financial demands of resourcing the new medium’s infrastructure, regulators relieved broadcasters of any local or genre obligations during television’s establishment period, even though television was considered a valuable means of socialising Australian children into their national cultural context (O’Regan, 1993). Children were also seen as a useful audience for encouraging family purchases of television sets, but were generally offered animated and drama series from the US or inexpensive studio-based entertainment shows sponsored by soft drink manufacturers (Potter, 2015).

By the late 1970s, societal concern about the scarcity of good quality children’s programmes including Australian-originated content led to sustained public campaigning for improved provision for the child audience. These campaigns were strengthened by a 1977 government review of broadcasters’ efforts at self-regulation by the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal (ABT). The ABT’s review condemned the television then on offer to Australian children as ‘some of the poorest quality and most commercialised programs (sic) on television’ (cited in Edgar, 2006: 56). The review led to the establishment of a Children’s Program (sic) Committee that recommended a diversity of children’s programmes should be produced, with Australian drama as a priority (Edgar, 2006). In 1979 the policy instrument the Children’s Television Standards (CTS) was introduced, placing requirements for local children’s programmes on the country’s three commercial broadcasters. The CTS also contained specific criteria intended to safeguard quality and cultural value (Aisbett, 2000). The new policy instrument was not supported by broadcasters, however, that initially relied heavily on inexpensive magazine programmes to fill their new obligations. As a result of commercial broadcasters’ reluctance to invest in high-cost genres such as drama, the CTS were modified in 1984 to specify 8 hours of children’s (or C) drama per broadcaster annually (either live action drama or animation). From 1983 to 2021, the CTS ensured that each of Australia’s three commercial broadcasters transmitted specific amounts of children’s television that had grown by 2021 to include 32 h of first run Australian drama each year. Broadcasters reluctantly fulfilled these cultural obligations to Australian children and regularly lobbied for their removal (Potter, 2015).

The Australian Children’s Television Foundation (ACTF) was established in 1982 largely in recognition of the need for a production house that could help fill the newly created demand for Australian drama (Edgar, 2006). The ACTF’s founding director, Dr Patricia Edgar, led campaigns for more Australian children’s television for over a decade beforehand and had chaired the ABT’s Children’s Program (sic) Committee in the late 1970s. Edgar’s advocacy was underpinned by a conviction that identifiably Australian drama is a critical element of children’s programming:

It was also my strong belief—and still is—that Australian children’s drama had to be Australian. Many critics argue that a good story works regardless of its setting and that, as long as Australians make good programs (sic), we don’t need to protect Australian culture per se. This is a fallacy. A story must first be an authentic, powerful Australian story before it will be of interest in an international marketplace (Edgar, 2006: 67).

The ACTF is government funded, with a complex remit to develop, produce, market, invest in and advocate for Australian children’s television. It also creates educational resources based on Australian screen content for schools. The organisation’s stated purpose is ‘to make Australian children’s lives better through screen content that reflects our culture and values’ (ACTF, 2022) although it offers few specifics as to what is meant by Australian culture and values. The organisation lists its own values as ‘inclusion, diversity, resilience, imagination, having fun and striving to be our best selves’ while its vision is ‘high quality Australian children’s screen content reaching and connecting with children on all the platforms we engage with’ (ACTF, 2022). Governed by a board of directors with representatives from each Australian state and territory and three from the federal government, the ACTF is led by CEO Jenny Buckland who has worked for the ACTF for 40 years and been CEO for the past twenty. Board chair Janet Holmes a Court was in the role for 36 years before stepping down in 2022.

Australia is unusual in its sustained commitment to this kind of quasi-government body undertaking such a wide-ranging role. In contrast, the UK’s Children’s Media Foundation established in 2006 (formerly Save Kids TV) is supported by donation, has no funds to distribute, and focuses its efforts on campaigning and advocacy. In Canada since 1998, the Shaw Rocket Foundation has a similar remit to the ACTF’s in terms of funding and advocating for children’s content but is privately funded, by giant telco Shaw Communications. Importantly, none of these organisations, regardless of funding basis, has its own distribution platform. In other words, it has no direct pathway to audiences for the content it produces and supports, meaning its operations are subject to demand, mandated or otherwise, from the screen sector.

The effectiveness of the ACTF in conditions of scarcity

The 1983 introduction of children’s drama quotas was critical to the development of a children’s television production industry in Australia. The quotas worked in tandem with specific requirements that children’s drama be well produced using sufficient resources to ensure a high standard of script, cast, direction, editing, shooting, sound and other production elements (ACMA, 2009a). Combined, these standards prevented commercial broadcasters fulfilling their obligations to the child audience as inexpensively as possible. As one leading producer put it, ‘We like the fact the C structure nursed high quality, that’s why it’s been good. It’s QC [quality control], like someone saying you can’t do rubbish’ (Jonathan Shiff personal communication 3 September 2003). Indeed, the CTS have been described as a benchmark for regulating children’s television in the public interest (Mencinsky and Mullin, 1999). The developing industry benefitted from steady and predictable demand for children’s drama driven by quotas while the requirements for high production values allowed Australian children’s drama to develop an international reputation for excellence (Potter, 2015).

Funding from other screen organisations helped support the production of Australian children’s drama. They included from 1989 the Film Finance Corporation (FFC), a government-owned financing body that became a significant source of direct funding for Australian film, mini-series and children’s drama. Despite this financial support and a generous tax rebate known as 10BA, drama production’s high cost and the comparatively low licencing fees paid by commercial broadcasters meant the children’s production sector relied on international investment for around 60% of drama budgets (Aisbett, 2000). Thus, the production of Australian children’s television was internationalised from the outset, with producers accustomed to accommodating both the quality and cultural requirements of the CTS, and the programming needs of international buyers (Ward and Potter, 2009). The involvement of commercial broadcasters as commissioning entities was crucial however, because it unlocked these direct and indirect funding subsidies.

A coherent policy framework, the relatively small number of production companies involved and the conditions of content scarcity that protected broadcasters’ mass audience revenues allowed a sustainable model for children’s drama production to develop during the 1990s and early 2000s. With limited viewing choices then available, C drama was watched by Australian children on commercial broadcasters as well as gaining substantial audiences outside Australia. The ACTF production Round the Twist (1989–2001) for example attracted an audience of five million children a week on the BBC in 1993. The publicly funded ACTF faced some resentment from the sector, however, because it was competing with privately owned production companies for available drama commissions. The ACTF was set up to do this because its founding CEO, Patricia Edgar, convinced politicians that only a non-profit organisation could be trusted to develop and produce quality children’s programmes (ACTF, 2022).

The significance of the ACTF’s role as advocate for children’s television, and the political connections it enjoyed during the 1990s particularly, should not be underestimated. They allowed the organisation to operate with a high degree of autonomy under the auspices of its board, as it still does. The organisation’s status as a statutory authority encompassing government departments for arts and culture, and education at both state and federal levels also allowed it a freedom of activity well beyond the communications ministry in which television was housed (Rutherford, 2014). Board members were drawn from across the screen industry as well as business and government sectors. They included from 1983–2001 Hazel Hawke, whose husband Bob Hawke was Australia’s prime minister from 1983–91. Board chair (1986–2022) Janet Holmes a Court is an influential business magnate based in Western Australia. Other countries, including the UK, might have benefited from a similar organisation with such capacity to secure policy, economic and cultural objectives for children’s television.

From the early 2000s, after Edgar’s retirement as its inaugural CEO, and under the leadership of new CEO Jenny Buckland, the ACTF adapted its operations. As a production house it had produced more than 115 h of content and won 45 national and international awards for its children’s drama since establishment (Cunningham and Jacka, 1996). But recognising that the children’s production sector was maturing, the ACTF moved away from its role as a producer towards facilitating and supporting drama production by other companies. The ACTF did this by providing funding for drama series development, and distribution advances where it invested in series made by other production companies in return for the rights to sell them. It also entered into some co-production arrangements with Australian producers. During this period of analogue television, the ACTF worked primarily on live action drama series commissioned by Australia’s three commercial broadcasters. The latter’s mandated involvement in children’s drama funding ensured Australian children were offered moderate amounts of domestically produced drama when few other forms of children’s media were available. Importantly, making children’s television was primarily a national endeavour; drama was commissioned by linear broadcasters, created by Australian production companies, and regulated by government, despite the importance of international sales to its viability (Potter, 2015).

The policy levers of content quotas, direct funding schemes and tax breaks functioned effectively in tandem with the ACTF’s range of activities when linear broadcasting dominated television provision. Culturally specific and well-resourced live action drama, the most high-cost form of children’s content, made up the vast majority of the C drama quotas, while the animated series that were also produced in response to artificial demand foregrounded Australian flora and fauna. Both genres sold well in international markets, including the US, where Australian animation made a welcome contrast with domestic cartoons (Groves, 1993). Commercial broadcasters may have resented their obligations but had few legitimate grounds for lobbying for their removal. They were protected from new market entrants and thus able to amass substantial advertising revenues, and there were few alternative viewing options for Australian children. Thus, the children’s television production ecology (Steemers, 2010) was balanced. All this changed, however, during the mid-2000s, thanks to digitisation. The end of spectrum scarcity provided enormous opportunities for Australian children’s television and young audiences while undermining the policy foundations on which the industry – and the ACTF – had been built.

Disruption and adaptation in digital regimes

Commercial broadcasters were always reluctant to invest in Australian children’s television because of its high costs compared to imports and because it was difficult to monetise young audiences (Potter, 2015). Nonetheless, the quid pro quo nature of Australian media policy held good until the mid-2000s. Digitisation and commercial broadcasters’ 2009 introduction of new multi-channels profoundly disrupted funding models and regulatory frameworks for children’s television, however. As pressures increased on their business model due to increased programming costs without any new advertising revenue, commercial broadcasters steadily de-funded their children’s quota obligations (Potter and Lotz, 2021). Under the terms of the CTS both live action drama and animation could be used to fill broadcasters’ C drama quotas and from the mid-2000s, broadcasters’ efforts to fill quotas more cheaply encouraged the use of animation. This genre made up only six per cent of drama quotas in 1984–89 but by 2006–7 animation hours had overtaken those of live action drama (ACTF, 2017). Animation is enormously popular with children and an important part of screen industries, but often eschews cultural specificity because it is co-produced with international partners and intended to circulate easily in global markets (Steemers, 2010).

A new regulator the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) was established in 2007 as regulators prepared for what was then referred to as ‘convergence’. The ACMA proved reluctant to refuse C drama classifications for children’s drama, unlike its predecessor the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) that regularly did so. ⁴ No minimum spending requirements that might have safeguarded live action drama’s production were in place and the cultural requirements of the CTS turned out to be quite weak in the face of broadcasters’ cost saving measures and the ACMA’s processes. Post-digitisation, quotas generated demand but did little to protect culturally specific live action drama. Further, much of the C drama made to fill quotas was now rating poorly, due to its inconsistent scheduling and poor promotion by commercial broadcasters, encouraging them to re-double their efforts to have quotas removed. Thus the original policy objectives of the CTS were comprehensively undermined by digitisation, and the ACMA’s reluctance to enforce the requirements of the CTS (Potter, 2015).

Digitisation disrupted funding norms for live action drama but also opened up new opportunities for the child audience that the ACTF was quick to recognise. At this stage of Australia’s digital transition, the conditions of scarcity for children’s content largely remained ⁵ and in 2006 the ACTF began to campaign for the establishment of a free-to-air children’s channel, a significant innovation. The ACTF recognised the potential for a properly resourced children’s linear channel spared the disruption to advertising revenues that commercial broadcasters were experiencing, including as a home for the ACTF’s extensive back catalogue (Rutherford, 2014). The ACTF was well aware of the critical role played by distribution (the service on which children’s television was made available); Australian drama attracted high audiences in international markets including on children’s channels where it could be found easily (Rutherford, 2014). As an established broadcaster, free from commercial constraints and with extra spectrum for new services, the ABC was much better equipped to provide this channel than the ACTF itself. The ACTF became the driving force behind the establishment of a dedicated Australian children’s channel on the ABC. At first, the organisation campaigned on its own, but later formally partnered with the ABC, whose newly appointed head of television Kim Dalton had worked at both the ACTF and FFC and had a strong commitment to Australian content and the domestic production sector. By 2007, their joint campaign succeeded in securing support from two successive and opposing governments for the ABC’s children’s channel, with an extra $67m in tied funding (that the ABC could not spend on anything else) provided for the children’s channel in the ABC’s 2009–12 triennial budget (Potter, 2015). In joining forces with the ABC, the ACTF necessarily conceded control to the broadcaster of the new venture that was eventually launched in 2009 (Rutherford 2014). Prior to its establishment, the ABC had been commissioning quite low levels of Australian drama (Potter, 2015). With a starting commitment of 50% Australian content and a significant funding boost however, the channel was seen as a significant source of new demand for Australian children’s drama. The children’s channel, first known as ABC3 (now ABCME) also increased the ABC’s cultural legitimacy, helping to ensure its relevance in increasingly crowded television markets (Rutherford, 2014).

The ACTF’s work in ensuring the ABC launched an adequately funded children’s channel with a strong commitment to Australian-originated content largely overlapped with its withdrawal from longstanding production collaborations involving Australia’s commercial broadcasters. As the latter steadily reduced their investment in their children’s quota obligations, the ACTF had limited opportunities to support drama that accorded with its own values. With the establishment of ABC3 however, the ACFT was able to shift its funding and often sales activities to children’s drama that fulfilled the original objectives of the CTS while operating entirely outside that policy framework. The ABC’s central role as commissioner of new children’s drama from 2007 was a reminder that the CTS had become unfit for purpose and were now largely a driver of animation production primarily made for audiences outside Australia (Potter, 2015).

The ABC’s children’s channel opened up new demand for children’s live action drama to a greater range of production companies, while masking to an extent the drop in demand caused by commercial broadcasters’ retreat from the genre (Potter, 2015). The ACTF played a key role in supporting the new channel’s live action dramas - along with other genres including factual and comedy - by providing development funds and distribution advances to what were often boutique content providers with very small slates and limited international sales networks. The success of the ABC’s children’s channel - by 2009 it had become the most popular service for Australian children between 5 and 12 years old (ABC, 2010) - saw ratings for C drama on commercial broadcasters fall even further. By now C drama quotas were largely driving economic activity rather than securing cultural outcomes.

The lack of content quotas on the ABC proved to be a problem, however. Post 2012, and the ending of its tied funding for its children’s channel, the ABC quietly reduced its commitment to local children’s content, reducing its target from 50% to 30% of the schedule (Potter, 2020). The PSB also reallocated resources from the children’s area to other parts of the organisation, with a concomitant effect on its investment in children’s drama. By 2014, ABC3 was investing more in animation than in live action drama commissions (Potter, 2015), and live action drama production levels fell sharply between 2012–17 (Lotz et al., 2021). Digitisation allowed the ABC to better accommodate the viewing needs of Australian children through the establishment of a dedicated children’s channel. However, the ACTF was powerless to prevent the ABC reducing its commitment to domestically produced children’s content as it faced financial challenges due to reduced government funding. The ABC has always operated without content quotas. For children’s content, this regulatory omission is particularly problematic, given the centrality of ABC investment to drama production and the threats posed to the sustainability of the children’s production sector by a large number of production companies competing for dwindling commissions.

Streaming services and children’s content

The ABC’s reduced investment in children’s content coincided with the introduction to the Australian market of streaming services with enormous appeal to children. YouTube had arrived in 2009, and from 2015 SVODs like NFX and Amazon Prime provided added competition to the ABC’s children’s channel. Children are a highly sought after audience for SVODs because children’s content anchors their offerings and drives family subscription packages (Potter, 2017). Digitisation and streaming video services brought conditions of abundance for all audiences, and particularly children, with SVODs supplementing PSB services and cable and satellite children’s brands like Nickelodeon and Disney. These children’s cable brands continued to operate with small local content obligations, but SVODs sat outside national regulatory frameworks.

With extensive catalogues of children’s content available from all over the world, SVODs had ample offerings for Australian children. But the absence of content quotas on streaming services was resented by a production sector long accustomed to regulated demand for Australian children’s content on linear broadcasters. ⁶ Increasing demands for content quotas on SVODs fail, however, to acknowledge that global gatekeepers are unlikely to be interested in securing cultural objectives for Australian children in their drama commissions, because they are intended primarily for international child audiences (Potter, 2020). SVOD investment may increase production activity - although this is often focussed on the US - and allow children in many countries to see age-specific drama with high production values. Such content does not necessarily contribute to the goals of national cultural representation, however, or support the sustainability of production sectors outside the US.

The internationalisation of Australian television caused by the popularity of streaming video services was increased by the ‘globalisation from within’ (O’Regan and Potter, 2013) of the screen production sector that peaked from 2006 to 2018 (Lotz and Sanson, 2021). Many Australian production companies were acquired by international corporations during this period, giving them competitive advantage due their access to parent company resources, market intelligence and distribution networks (Lotz and Sanson, 2021). Some independently owned companies continued to make children’s drama, including Jonathan Shiff Productions which had longstanding distribution arrangements with Germany’s ZDF Enterprises that underpinned its drama costs (Potter, 2015). But the new ownership structures of large parts of the production sector further integrated Australian children’s drama production into global supply chains. Amid these new forces of internationalisation, the ACTF continued to fund development and take distribution rights for Australian drama where possible. However international parent companies wanted to retain the distribution rights to the drama made by their newly acquired local branches, rendering the ACTF somewhat redundant in these arrangements. As the ABC’s drama commissions became part of these new ownership arrangements, the ACTF was at risk of being squeezed out of what had been a core part of its marketing activities in intenational markets.

The ACTF also recognised the opportunities that SVODs like Netflix presented for different sources of funding and new partnerships for drama production. As in many markets, the SVOD initially partnered with public service broadcasters as it eased itself into drama commissions. From 2018, the ACTF began to collaborate with Netflix on the small number of live action dramas jointly commissioned with the ABC, including The InBESTigators (2019) and sci-fi thriller The Unlisted (2019). The ACTF’s distribution arrangements on Netflix co-commissions differed from previous country by country sales efforts however, as the SVOD preferred to take rest of world rights for series such as The Unlisted after its Australian ABC transmission. And despite its welcome investment in Australian drama, SVOD preference for shorter series (and budgetary constraints at the ABC) significantly reduced production volume. Series made for Netflix were shorter than those commissioned for C drama quota requirements. For example, Jonathan Shiff’s mermaid-themed series H20: Just Add Water (2006–10) consisted of 72 half-hour episodes while the ABC drama Dance Academy (2009–12) was made up of 65 half-hour episodes. In contrast, The Unlisted was 14 half-hour episodes in total. The ACTF’s activities with Netflix and ABC co-commissions, therefore, remained fairly small in scale.

The growing status of the child audience in digital regimes stood in stark contrast to advertiser-supported linear channels’ programming strategies. For these broadcasters, sustained investment in drama for Australian children was increasingly undesirable. After decades of lobbying, and with profits declining as advertiser spending moved to search and social media, commercial broadcasters’ demands for policy reform paid off in 2021, when their local content obligations were adjusted. The axing of children’s quotas was part of broader efforts to create an alleged ‘level playing field’ with SVODS, policy reform that also led to adults’ drama obligations being significantly watered down (Potter and Lotz, 2021). Key safeguards for national cultural specificity in children’s drama contained in the CTS were also lost with the disintermediation of commercial broadcasters from children’s drama production. The government legislated these very favourable arrangements for commercial broadcasters without seeking any concessions in return, leaving the provision of Australian drama generally and children’s content in a regulatory limbo.

The quotas’ removal left an inconsistently funded ABC, and largely US-based SVODS as the primary commissioners of Australian children’s drama. Both operated without any mandated minimum levels of children’s content but had charter/market reasons compelling this programming. The removal of children’s quotas from linear television after four decades attracted little attention (mid-Covid), other than from disgruntled producers. The absence of societal concern about the loss of demand for children’s content is indicative of the availability of abundant supplies of children’s screen content in digital regimes. It also reflects shifts in parental concern to other aspects of children’s relationship with the media, such as online safety (Potter, 2020). Despite the ACT’s efforts to take advantage of the opportunities generated by digitisation its activities were eventually constrained by the industrial and regulatory contexts in which it now operated.

The efficacy of 40 years of Australian policy approaches including contestable funding

Shortly after the removal of children’s content quotas, the ACTF suddenly found itself at the centre of the children’s production ecology (Steemers, 2010) again, when in 2021 the Australian government unexpectedly allocated it rather than the ABC (with its own children’s channel) an extra $20m in funding for 2 years. Overnight and without any public or industry consultation the organisation, which had previously had an operating budget of around $3–4 m a year, became the largest source of direct funding for Australian children’s content. The new money’s stated purpose was ‘to boost the development, production and distribution of high-quality Australian children’s content’ (ACTF, 2022) but it was also seen as a means of cushioning the blow of quotas’ removal to the production sector. As administrator of what is effectively a large contestable fund as well as a producer/marketer of children’s programmes, policy advocate and educator, the ACTF’s brief became even more complex.

Contestable funds are a pool of money provided by either governments or levies on services, for which producers compete and have been used in other countries including New Zealand, Denmark and the UK. The use of such funding schemes rests on the assumption that screen content with high cultural value, including drama and children’s programmes, can be made by both private and public organisations, and that more diverse content is likely to be created by a broader range of providers (Steemers and Feryal, 2016). Such schemes are not without their challenges, including lack of demand from providers for the type of content they are intended to support. In the absence of content quotas, few guarantees exist that commercial organisations will apply for contestable funding, particularly if they do not cover the entire cost of production. Care has to be taken also that the content supported by such schemes delivers on cultural as well as economic objectives. Without such safeguards, the schemes can become another means of supporting production activity as an end in itself. Crucially, access to and discoverability of the content funded by contestable funds remains an ongoing challenge (Steemers and Feryal, 2016).

The ACTF’s administration of the fund poses some problems. The organisation faced difficulties, for example, in administering to new projects an unexpected sum of money equivalent to many times its annual budget in 2 years, including by hiring more staff, given there is no indication that such funding will continue. The lack of consultation around the allocation of the new resources also allowed little preparation time not just for the ACTF but also for the production sector. The organisation also has to find services that are incentivised to invest in domestically produced children’s content and provide a pathway to Australian children in the immediate aftermath of the quotas’ axing. Lack of demand for contestable funds also risks the over-capitalisation of the productions for which applications are received, when money is only available for a limited period. A free-to-air linear children’s channel and on demand player like the ABC’s iView may be a more effective means of distributing such content without paywalls, and without homes requiring internet access. The ABC also has the staff and infrastructure as well as a broad production slate that would allow it to manage such a funding increase more easily.

The introduction of another contestable fund, the Young Audiences Content Fund (YACF) in 2019, saw the UK trial this funding model for the first time and provides a useful comparative example. Resourced with 57 million pounds taken from left over BBC licence fee allocations set aside for broadband rollout, the YACF was intended to broaden the supply of commissioning entities beyond the BBC, nurture new talent and increase the platforms on which children could access UK content (DCMS, 2019). The YACF offered producers up to 50% of content costs as well as development funding, with a free to air, Ofcom-regulated broadcaster’s attachment a condition of receiving funds to ensure content’s wide UK availability (DCMS 2019). Producers were therefore reliant on commissioners, including advertiser supported public service broadcasters like ITV and Channel Five, for the remaining finance. Subscriber supported services were ineligible, as they are paywalled.

The YACF supported UK content made first and foremost for UK children. This contrasts with Australia where an increasing reliance on SVOD investment for children’s screen production de-prioritises the needs of national audiences. In its 2 years of operation, the YACF part-financed 55 projects that have been produced or are in production, and distributed 144 development grants. Productions included Teen First Dates (2021) for E4, craft show Makeaway Takeway (2021) for Children’s ITV and The World According to Grandpa (2021) (for Channel 5 children’s strand Milkshake) (Steemers, 2022). The UK government ended the YACF pilot scheme late in 2021 however, without the full evaluation of its effectiveness that had been promised to determine its future. With the dismantling of the YACF, responsibility for UK-originated children’s television was placed largely back on the BBC as part of its regulated obligations to children. The variety, diversity and breadth of children’s programmes supported by the YACF seem unlikely to be feasible under current UK funding arrangements that have the BBC at their centre, particularly given BBC Children’s closer alignment to BBC Studios and growing investment in animation (Steemers, 2022). Similarities exist between the YACF and the ACTF’s scheme, with both intended to support a greater range and diversity of screen content for young audiences. Both are administered by screen agencies (the British Film Institute in the case of the YACF) with decades of sector experience. But the YACF was set up under entirely new and closely monitored arrangements and recruited highly regarded children’s producer and media executive Jackie Edward as its inaugural head. In contrast the ACTF’s significant new resourcing was incorporated into its existing operations – and very well established brand - of 40 years, including its funding guidelines. The economic conditions in which they operate are different too. Unlike the UK, Australia has always had a very high dependence on advertising revenue to fund local content including children’s. Other revenues are limited due to low uptake of satellite and cable services and a PSB that is entirely and unreliably funded by government at less than half the per capita rate of the UK (Lotz et al., 2022). In 2019, commercial broadcasters spent nearly $A12 m on children’s drama (ACMA, 2021: 4), that source of revenue has now largely disappeared. Instead, the ACTF relies on the ABC and streaming services to commission content that accesses its funds. The ABC commissioned six of the seven children’s drama projects that went into production in 2020, and eight out of eleven in 2021 (Screen Australia, 2022). So, although both are contestable funding schemes, the industrial, economic and regulatory conditions in which they were established are entirely different.

From the vantage point of 2022, it is clear that the ACTF and policy instrument the CTS played a critical role in the Australian children’s television production ecology for many years. Working in tandem, they were highly effective at safeguarding supplies of culturally specific children’s television in broadcast television’s conditions of scarcity. The ACTF was, and remains, an adaptable organisation as its collaborations with first commercial television, then the ABC and most recently streaming services demonstrate. But the organisation now operates in conditions of content abundance in the on-demand age. Prior to receiving its extra funding, the ACTF’s influence in the children’s production ecology was waning as opportunities for it to support children’s drama contracted due to reduced spending on the genre by commercial broadcasters, cutbacks at the ABC and SVOD preference for shorter series runs. The short-term nature of the extra $A20m funding, the absence of the ACTF’s own pathway to audiences, the policy vacuum in which Australian children’s television now exists and the growing internationalisation of Australian television all constrain the ACTF’s ability to effectively support children’s content including drama made first and foremost for Australian children.

Conclusion

The changed industrial conditions of television have rendered small screen agencies such as the ACTF an outmoded policy solution, particularly as administrator of a contestable funding scheme. Innovative policy approaches are therefore needed that recognise the transformations that have occurred in the sector due to new distribution technologies and a sustained trend in Australian cultural policy making that appears to disproportianately benefit commercial broadcasting. The child audience would likely be better served by tied and enhanced support for institutions namely the ABC, the only freely available service with multiple direct pathways to audiences, rather than the ad hoc funding of a small screen agency. Increased funding tied to children’s content would also contribute to the sustainability of the children’s production sector that at present remains without any mandated or predictable demand for its products. Proponents of contestable funds emphasise the importance of diversity of voices and providers but in medium sized television markets like Australia, the most sustainable model likely includes fewer providers with broader slates and structural connections to international companies (Lotz and Sanson, 2021). Focussing resources on the ABC would also make the commissioning of Australian children’s drama from such production houses a national rather than a global activity, by a PSB whose charter requires it to represent and reflect Australia back to all audiences, including children. ⁷ Larger questions loom about the extent to which children’s viewing needs have changed, given the abundant supplies of professionally produced content including drama available to them on multiple platforms, a far cry from the conditions of scarcity that characterised analogue regimes. The child audience’s changed status and the proliferation in media forms available to children raise other questions, because the core need of young audiences is arguably different in conditions of abundance than it was in conditions of scarcity. Efforts to ensure all children have digital access to entertaining and educational content may be wiser than focussing on a lack of domestically produced content for children in affluent homes with multiple media choices. Regardless, children’s viewing needs and the change industrial contexts of screen production must be recognised and accommodated in any new policy frameworks and funding schemes.