TV drama production up in 2012-13
Screen Australia has issued its annual Drama Report that indicates a lift in TV drama production, and more of it to NSW.
- Published by David Knox
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Screen Australia has issued its annual Drama Report, which details the results of Drama production for the financial year 2012-13.
This year Screen Australia says production is up 9% on 2011-12 with New South Wales enjoying 57% of the work.
The report is always quite lengthy and sometimes there is devil in the detail, so I will need time to dissect some of it. For now I will publish the key findings as reported by Screen Australia themselves:
Total expenditure in Australia by the 2012/13 drama slate was $752 million, a 9 per cent increase on the previous year. Australian TV drama accounted for 50 per cent of expenditure, Australian feature films 33 per cent and foreign activity (primarily feature production) 17 per cent.
Expenditure by the Australian slate – domestic productions and official co-productions – totalled $622 million, comprising 656 hours of TV drama (56 titles) spending $372 million and 27 features spending $250 million.
Australian TV drama expenditure increased by 27 per cent on the previous year to reach the highest level on record, and total hours increased by 19 per cent. Mini-series production continued to climb, and children’s drama recorded strong growth following a contraction over the previous three years. Increased investment by the ABC contributed to growth in both children’s and adults’ drama production.
Australian feature production was down on last year but close to the five-year average. There were no co-productions in the feature slate for the first time in 14 years, while last year’s slate included two high-budget, foreign-financed titles as well as four co-productions.
Foreign activity accounted for expenditure in Australia of $130 million in 2012/13, up from $98 million last year, primarily due to the high-budget US feature The Wolverine. Six foreign features and two foreign TV dramas started shooting in Australia during the year, and six foreign projects (all features) undertook PDV in Australia without shooting here.
EXPENDITURE BY LOCATION
Of total 2012/13 drama expenditure, 57 per cent occurred in NSW, 30 per cent in Victoria and 7 per cent in South Australia.
You can download the full report here.
5 Responses
If only there could also be a lift in the quality as well as quantity.
The reality is that commercial drama networks scrape to meet the minimum drama quota and other than Seven rarely exceed it. The difficulty the commercial networks now have is that despite the cost of local drama it is hugely popular with audiences and if you can get it right and bed it down into the schedule as Seven has consistently done then it is great for the network and its advertisers. The increase in drama hours is largely because of the ABC’s extra funding five or so years ago and is dependant on the whim of Federal funding. SBS has almost no money for drama and PAYTV spends no more than what is required which is 10% of its drama acquisition budget and includes a number of channels such as World Movies which years ago successfully lobbied a gullible ACMA to be excluded. So Pertinax it is an ongoing battle to defend Aussie drama and it can’t be taken for granted.
Wouldn’t it make sense for the public broadcasters to be held to the same local content requirements as the commercial networks? If they were, they likely wouldn’t be so inefficient in drama. Take a look at the commissioning teams within each network and spot the grossly inefficient one.
And yet the lobby groups will continue to claim that the sky is falling and that the drama quotas and local content rules aren’t tough enough.
Which ones? It was welcomed by SPAA.