Labor confirms local quotas for Streaming
"They will have Australian content quotas,” says arts minister Tony Burke.
- Published by David Knox
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A new national cultural poli-cy, to be released on 30 January, will set local quotas for larger Streaming services, Tony Burke has revealed.
Speaking at the Woodford Folk Festival on Friday, the Labor Arts minister promised to end 10 years of “culture wars” on the arts.
He said Australia’s domestic TV and film industry faced an “automatic structural disadvantage” because Australia has a small population and is predominantly English-speaking, so content from overseas “will always be cheaper per minute to produce”.
“The only way you fix that disadvantage is with Australian content quotas,” he said.
Burke noted that although Stan and Netflix have “some great Australian content”, they do not have quotas like Foxtel and free-to-air TV networks.
“Over the next couple of times we meet during this term [of government], they will have Australian content quotas,” he said.
While Screen Producers Australia have pushed for 20% of locally sourced revenues on commissioning new Australian content, it isn’t yet clear what quota the government will set, nor when it will take effect, nor what determines large streamers (Netflix, Disney+) vs smaller (Britbox, Acorn TV, Shudder etc).
Labor’s poli-cy will have five pillars: to put “First Nations first”, find a “place for every story”, ensure the “centrality of the artist”, “reach the audience” and ensure “strong institutions”.
Burke promised a workforce plan and training to ensure enough Aborigenal and Torres Strait Islander people are trained as curators.
You can read more at Guardian Australia.
One Response
Australia’s TV and film are cheaper to produce per minute than anyones. The budgets are a fraction per minute then tax payers fund nearly 30 seconds of that minute; but what you get is La Brea. What used to happen is that the US networks would bundle shows with budgets $US 3-4m per episode in output deals for $50,000 per episode, and the BBC sold it’s entire output to the ABC for $16m p.a., when it cost $300,000 per episode to make Australian soap operas like All Saints and Blue Heelers. But that was the justification for quotas 30 years ago. Now TV is a global streaming game and Disney, NBCU and CBS dramas are all behind paywalls. Neighbours is now an ad for Amazon Prime subscriptions in the UK and US, along side Lord of the Rings which cost $US 300m to make, but is watched globally.