$70m for ABC drama

Kim Dalton, Director of Television at ABC, has given a Plenary Address to the Screen Producer’s Association of Austalia Conference in Sydney.

It’s the same conference where Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner has spoken to local producers and where Packed to the Rafters creator Bevan Lee directed a comment to offended viewers, “We wanted to do an adult show about family. It was never considered to be a family show.”

Amongst some of Dalton’s statements about future directions for the public broadcaster, he outlined the spend of key sectors, with a significant increase in drama production.

From its $167 million dollar package won from the Federal Budget it will direct $67 million over three years to ABC3; and $70 million in new funding for local drama production. This is up from $84m for the combined documentaries, dramas and children’s projects.

“This boost in funding is, of course, very welcome,” says Dalton. “It will allow the ABC to deliver on key content objectives.”

Dalton indicated the following spend over the 3 years of the Triennium, including both base and new funding:

ABC Children’s TV to spend a total of $48.2 million on the production of Australian Content, of which almost $40 million represents licence fees to be paid to independent producers generating 455 hours of content.

This expenditure by ABC Children’s TV will generate a total of $104 million of Australian production value, of which $95 million represents production by independent producers.

ABC Drama to spend a total of $82 million on the production of Australian Content, generating 133 Hours of content.

This expenditure by Drama will generate a total of $130.0 million of Australian production value.

ABC Comedy to spend a total of $26 million on the production of Australian Content, generating 43 hours of content.

This expenditure by Comedy will generate a total of $35.0 million of Australian production value.

In the areas of Documentaries, Entertainment, Factual and Arts the ABC expects to spend a total of $90 million on the production of Australian Content, this will generate 405 hours of content.

This expenditure by Documentaries, Entertainment, Factual and Arts will generate a total of $150 million of Australian production value.

In total, the ABC is committing $238 million across the next three years, generating production budgets of over $400 million and commissioning over 1000 hours of new Australian content.

Dalton also spelled out more about ABC2.

Unlike ABC 3 where there is new money and accordingly at start up 40% local content building to 50% in twelve months, ABC 2 has been funded out of the ABC’s existing appropriation – there is no new money for ABC 2. As a consequence the only way we have been able to fill a schedule for ABC2, outside of our morning News block, has been largely to run repeats of programs from ABC 1 and by acquiring cheap foreign content.

It is difficult to draw a comparison with ABC 1 due to the different transmission hours but if we look at the total first release Australian content on ABC1 between 6am and midnight compared to the total first release on ABC 2 you see there is approximately 50 per cent less first release local content on ABC2.

ABC recently announced the new drama series, The Slap.