Creativity, Culture and Commerce

Producing Australian Children’s Television with Public Value

Anna Potter

• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781783204410
• eBook ISBN: 9781783204434
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performing Arts

Since the late 1970s, Australia has nurtured a creative and resilient children's television production sector with a global reputation for excellence. Providing a systematic analysis of the creative, economic, regulatory and technological factors that shape the production of contemporary Australian children's television for digital regimes, Creativity, Culture and Commerce charts the complex new settlements in children's television that developed from 2001 to 2014 and describes the challenges inherent in producing culturally specific screen content for global markets. It also calls for new public debate around the provision of high-quality screen content for children, arguing that the creation of public value must sit at the centre of these discussions.

Chapter 1

Understanding Children’s Television During the Digital Transition

The child audience in Australia has always been considered a special television audience. Children, it is commonly accepted, must be protected from the worst aspects of television while being provided with access to certain desirable types of television made especially for them. The various roles ascribed to children’s television—the education and socialization of children, the protection of children from unsuitable content and the allaying of adult fears about television’s possible ill effects on children—mean it has a distinctive set of functions that are different from television made for adults.

The complexity of expectations around Australian children’s television places its production under unusual regulatory, cultural and economic pressures, which include an inherent vulnerability to market failure for live action drama. Special taxpayer-funded supports, administered by national screen bodies such as Screen Australia, are designed to ensure supplies of high-quality, local children’s television that the market would not normally provide. Since the late 1960s state support for children’s television has included content quotas on Australia’s free-to-air commercial networks. These quotas were introduced following public outcry about the poor quality of the television on offer to Australian children; they include specific requirements for minimum amounts of locally made children’s drama, which can be filled with either animation or live action drama.

The circumstances within which children’s television is produced and distributed in Australia were transformed from 2001 to 2014, as Australian television underwent its transition to a digital regime. Technological and industrial changes in broadcasting began as early as 1995 with the introduction of pay-TV in Australia. The pace of change accelerated in 2001 with digital transmission. Between 2001 and 2014 in Australia free-to-air channels proliferated, well-resourced pan-global pay-TV networks increased their presence, online television catch up services developed, and smart phones and tablets became ubiquitous.

Technological developments meant that for the first time viewers, including children, could access television on multiple devices, on the move and outside the home. Free-to-air advertiser-funded television struggled to adjust to the altered circumstances of broadcasting, as audiences and advertising revenues fragmented across the new platforms on offer. One effect of fragmentation was a downward pressure on the licence fees networks were prepared to pay for children’s television during this period, which added further challenges to the already difficult task of raising the finance required for its production.

Australia’s digital transition saw the gradual development of specialized niche services for audiences, including children, who are recognized drivers of pay-TV subscription uptake. The television landscape changed again for the child viewer with the arrival of dedicated free-to-air children’s channels ABC3 in 2009.¹ Provided by public service broadcaster the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), the new children’s service quickly became the most watched free-to-air channel in Australia among children aged 5–12. The proliferation in children’s television services that occurred during the digital transition saw the child audience transformed from an unwanted obligation for free-to-air commercial operators in Australia to a sought after audience for specialist providers such as The Disney Channel, Nickelodeon and ABC3. The changed status of the child audience in Australia reflected international trends in television, including the rise of pan-global channels providing themed content for niche audiences.

As all audiences, including the child audience, fragmented into niche markets and licence fees fell in Australia and internationally, the need increased for what quickly became very complex international funding and co-production arrangements. One effect of the increased internationalization in the financing and production of Australian children’s television was a requirement to minimize the cultural specificity that might inhibit its circulation in world television markets.

Not all of the effects of these altered circumstances of television were felt simultaneously nor did they necessarily bring about immediate, measurable changes; many production practices and industrial norms altered gradually and without fanfare. Cumulatively however the transition to a digital regime led to the creation of new settlements in Australian children’s television. These new settlements are characterized by abundant supply, pan-platform distribution, internationalization, budget pressures, and a reduced ability of much of the Australian children’s television produced with direct and indirect state support to situate Australian children within their own culture.

The analysis undertaken here explains how the digital transition led to new industrial, creative, regulatory and economic circumstances for the production of Australian children’s television. This account is important and timely because of the special status of the child audience, the regulatory and financial supports that underpin the production of children’s television in Australia and the worldwide reputation for excellence that Australian children’s television has enjoyed since the 1980s. The new settlements in Australian children’s television must be understood if future supplies of locally made, culturally specific, high-quality children’s television are to be safeguarded.

Children and Television

Television was first introduced to Australia in 1956. Even before its introduction, concerns were expressed about television’s possible ill effects on Australian children and family life. By the mid-1960s these concerns about the relationship between children and television had crystallized into public dissatisfaction with the poor quality of the television on offer to Australian children. Since that time various forms of state intervention have been justified in order to secure the presence in the schedule of the age-specific, quality children’s programming that the market would not normally support. These include the important legislative instrument the Children’s Television Standards (CTS) that has, since 1979, mandated minimum amounts of good quality children’s programmes including drama on Australia’s free-to-air commercial networks.

A long-standing tradition of state intervention and funding supports for the provision of Australian screen content, including children’s content, from the 1960s onwards helped to support the emergence of a resourceful and creative Australian independent production sector. Australian children’s television is an important part of that independently produced local content. It has won numerous international awards and is shown in over 100 countries. Indeed programmes such as Skippy (1968–69), Round the Twist (1999–2001), H2O: Just Add Water (2006–08) and Dance Academy (2010–13) have led to Australian children’s television becoming some of the most successful children’s television ever made.

These original and unique live action drama series, which, with the exception of Skippy, were partly state-funded, managed to maintain high production standards and situate Australian children within their own culture, while circulating in international markets. Live action drama of this sort became increasingly difficult to fund during the digital transition however, with its production levels declining sharply on Australia’s free-to-air commercial networks. Live action drama requires substantially higher budgets than most forms of animation and is generally more difficult to distribute in international markets, because of its cultural specificity and cost.

Considerable societal and technological changes have occurred since the 1950s. Nonetheless children’s television and media consumption continues to be the subject of discussion, regulatory attention, optimism and concern. Children are considered both vulnerable and corruptible television viewers who deserve protection from the wrong kind of content and access to the right type (Keys 1999; Simpson 2004). Witness the furore surrounding the ABC’s decision to feature a child with lesbian parents on Play School on May 31 2004, which led to condemnation from both sides of politics. Indeed the then minister for children Larry Anthony accused the producers of the programme of failing in their responsibility to parents.

The right type of television, with high production values, pro-social values and local cultural relevance, is considered beneficial for children. Featuring children with Australian accents and dealing with recognizable Australian situations, such television enables children to be better situated within, and have a grasp of, their own national space and its history and traditions. The public value provided through the provision of programmes that speak directly to the Australian child audience and in doing so situate Australian children within their own culture helps justify the taxpayer-funded supports these programmes, particularly drama, require. Such television does not come cheaply, with an hour of children’s drama costing on average $550,400 to make in 2013, compared with $14,000 on average for an hour of news and current affairs (ABS 2013a).

The abundant supply of children’s television available to contemporary Australian children is made up of the specialized programming and multi-platform content provided by free-to-air advertiser-funded networks, by public service media ABC (including dedicated children’s channel ABC3) and by eight children’s pay-TV channels. (Australia’s second public service broadcaster, the multi-cultural Special Broadcasting Services (SBS), does not usually transmit children’s content.) So unlike their 1950s counterparts, contemporary Australian children are overwhelmed with choice, of both content and viewing platforms.

In Australia’s digital regime, children consume their media across a wide array of electronic devices, only one of which is a television set. As a result, many have drifted away from free-to-air commercial channels to the Internet, pay-TV services and mobile devices. Nonetheless free-to-air commercial channels remain the prime site for the regulation of Australian children’s television, the enforcement of its content quotas and the quality requirements of the CTS. Considerable taxpayer funding is invested in the children’s programmes these networks transmit, although the networks themselves are under no obligation to pay any sort of minimum licence fee to producers for their children’s programmes.

Cultural and social concerns about the well-being and special status of the child viewer in Australia exist within the context of a television system that is largely, although not entirely, governed by business principles. The majority of the children’s television made in contemporary Australia, particularly drama, is produced by independent production companies, although some networks also produce children’s television in-house. The survival of privately owned production companies depends on their ability to generate profits from the children’s programmes they produce with public subsidy, in contrast to any public value created by these programmes.

The production of children’s television is complicated then by the tensions that have always existed between television’s free market operations, shaped by consumer demand and the pursuit of profit, and television as an instrument for social, cultural and civic improvement, deserving of state subsidy. These long-standing tensions were exacerbated by their intersection with the creative, industrial, economic and regulatory changes that occurred in television from 2001 to 2014 as Australia made its transition to a fragmented digital regime.

Public Value and Australian Children’s Television

At this point it is useful to clarify the terms that will be used throughout this book, crucially what the terms ‘children’, ‘children’s television’ and ‘public value’ can be understood to mean. Various differences in legal status are ascribed to a number of developmental stages of the child (in Australia, for example, a young person is considered to be criminally responsible at 10, is allowed to have sex at 16 but cannot vote until they are 18). This book will rely however on government regulatory body The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA’s) definition of a child as being aged under 14 years, which is the definition used in the CTS.

Policy-makers chose this age range because the CTS are designed to create programming for pre-school and primary school children who may be aged up to 13 due to state by state differences in the ages at which Australian children start high school (ABT 1991). While pre-school television provides a rich area of investigation, its production circumstances are not the subject of analysis here. Pre-school television is underpinned by a different business model (see for example the global success of Bananas in Pyjamas, The Wiggles and Hi-5), and has a differently conceived audience and different aesthetics from other forms of children’s television (Steemers 2010).

The multi-platformed nature of contemporary television distribution suggests television can no longer be thought of in its analogue-era sense as a mass medium that broadcasts simultaneously to a collective audience. Indeed it is not unusual to hear Australian children (and their parents) claim that they do not watch television at all. Nonetheless these same children will often demonstrate a familiarity with many children’s series, a familiarity probably explained by the popularity of the new platforms of delivery available for children’s television. These include the mobile devices, online catch-up services, tablets and computers that enable children to watch television on demand and away from home. The first episode of Series Two of ABC3’s live action drama series Dance Academy attracted 1.8 million programme plays on the ABC’s online catch-up service iView and its Watch Now website (Screen Australia 2013a). So while children’s television viewing may often be asynchronous, self-scheduled and platform-agnostic, Australian children are still watching television programmes with enthusiasm.

Children’s television will be understood then as programmes that are made specifically for a child audience (as opposed to G-rated material, which is not deliberately made for children). This sort of television can range from the high budget live action drama screened to satisfy sub-quotas in the CTS to the animated series distributed by pan-global pay-TV children’s services in order to attract subscribers and revenue. The term will include but not be limited to: live action drama, animation, reality, quiz and game shows, entertainment and documentaries. While children’s television can be understood as programmes made specifically for children, they are not of course the only programmes that children watch. Masterchef, Australia’s Got Talent and Dancing with the Stars, all of which were Australian content airing on commercial free-to-air networks, were the most popular programmes with children in 2011 (Screen Australia 2011a: 69).

Although some fluidity surrounds the term ‘children’s television’, Australia’s media policy-makers, since 1979, have expressed clear beliefs about children’s television through policy instruments such as the CTS. The current standards state that a children’s programme is one which is made specifically for children or groups of children and:

(a) is entertaining;

(b) is well produced using sufficient resources to ensure a high standard of script, cast, direction, editing, shooting, sound and other production elements;

(c) enhances a child’s understanding and experience; and

(d) is appropriate for Australian children.

(ACMA 2009: 4)

while C drama, of which commercial free-to-air networks must transmit 32 hours of first-run content annually, is required to meet the following criteria:

(a) the programme must be classified by the ACMA as a C programme;

(b) the programme must, in the opinion of the ACMA, be a fully scripted screenplay or teleplay in which the dramatic elements of character, theme and plot are introduced and developed so as to form a narrative structure;

(c) the programme may include sketch comedy programmes, animated drama and dramatized documentary, but may not include sketches within variety programmes, or characterizations within documentary programmes, or any other form of programme or segment within a programme that involves only the incidental use of actors; and

(d) the programme must, in the opinion of the ACMA, meet the requirements for an Australian programme in the Australian Content Standard.

(ACMA 2009: 9)

The inclusion of an Australian drama quota is implicit acknowledgement that while children should have access to age-specific, quality television, programmes sourced from countries other than Australia can be expected to make up a significant proportion of this television. These programmes take into account children’s particular developmental stages and social needs, while one of Australian drama’s key purposes is to situate Australian children within their own culture. Drama is also a genre most vulnerable to market failure and least likely to be provided without special support.

The term ‘public value’ as applied to this analysis of Australian children’s television relies on Mark Moore’s work (1995, 2013). Moore defines public value as the public enterprise equivalent of the shareholder value that private companies are obliged to create for their private investors (1995). The public value of Australian children’s television is understood here as a quality that exists over and above any private value realized in its consumption through programme sales, merchandising, advertising or pay-TV revenues. Public value is created instead when national cultural and political agendas are served through the presence of minimum amounts of identifiably Australian, age-specific television in Australian television schedules. The CTS are themselves an expression of public value in children’s television, intended to secure television, including drama that is made in the best interests of the child, rather than in the best interests of producers, broadcasters and regulators.

The market would not normally support the production of desirable levels of local content including children’s drama on Australian commercial television. Instead the ACMA and various publically funded screen industry support organizations would typically generate public value for the Australian tax payer. They would do this by mandating or supporting the production of identifiably Australian stories that situate children within their own culture, and other forms of age appropriate content. Broad and sustained community support for the investment of public money in the provision of locally made, quality children’s television exists because this kind of television is considered to have a higher purpose than the mere generation of financial profits. Television that speaks directly to Australian children realizes the larger goals of child socialization, citizenship and identity. Australian children’s television secures public value then when it meets the objectives of policy settings underpinned by societal and political agreement that children are a special television audience. On the other hand, television that serves the interests of broadcasters, producers and screen bodies but not of the child audience lacks public value.

The public funding that is required to underpin the production and distribution of Australian children’s television is derived ‘through the coercive power of taxation’ (Moore 1995: 30). This coercion entails a diminution of consumer sovereignty, as citizens have little opportunity to exert control over what is produced, as they would have in the private sector through their individual purchasing decisions. Nonetheless democratic systems of government allow individual citizens to exert some degree of control over public enterprises through their support, or lack of, for certain political mandates (Moore 1995).

The democratic will to provide certain forms of cultural content for Australian children prevails, despite broadcasting transformations, because the public continues to believe that locally made children’s television has social and cultural worth. The public, whose contributions through taxation fund state support for Australian children’s television, remains its key stak...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Understanding Children’s Television During the Digital Transition
• Chapter 2: Shaping the Foundations: Establishing an Australian Children’s Television Production Industry
• Chapter 3: A Very Special Audience: Children and Television
• Chapter 4: The National Context: Australian Broadcasters, Children’s Television and Public Value
• Chapter 5: It’s a Small World After All: The Internationalization of Australian Children’s Television
• Chapter 6: Policing the Settlement: Policy and Public Value in Children’s Television
• Chapter 7: Producing Children’s Television for Digital Regimes: Case Studies from the Production Sector
• Chapter 8: New Settlements in Children’s Television: Key Trends and Future Outlook
• References
• Index
• Back Page