Childrens TV, Documentary at SVOD 4 year lows.

Subscription video on demand providers spent $341 million on Australian programs in the 2023–24 financial year, up from $324 million in 2022–23, according to new data from the ACMA.

This included a $6 million increase in expenditure for commissioned programs, mainly across the adult drama and light entertainment genres, and an $11 million increase in expenditure on acquired programs.

However, there was decreased expenditure on Australian children’s programs and Australian documentary.

The data comes from the fifth ACMA SVOD Australian content report and includes figures provided on a voluntary basis from Prime Video, Disney+, Netflix, Paramount+ and Stan.

It doe not include Apple TV+.

Overall, Australians were able to watch more Australian content across all five SVOD services. At 30 June 2024, 3,776 Australian program titles were available to Australian audiences across these services, up from 3,757 in the previous year.

Australian programs continued to be available to international audiences. For 2023–24, the largest number of Australian program titles and hours were available in North and South American countries.

In addition to expenditure on Australian content, providers also spent $200 million on acquiring, producing, or investing in 32 Australian-related programs, which meet some, but not all the criteria to be classified as Australian content.

This expenditure included commissioning Australian-related programs, producing foreign programs in Australia, and providing long-term employment opportunities through local production facilities.

Screen Producers Australia:

“Today’s ACMA report reflects the series of policy failures suffered upon the screen industry over a number of years and paints an increasingly bleak picture of the level of investment in Australian screen culture increasingly dominated by global streaming services, which year on year reflect a decrease in the number of programs being made in Australia; a collapse in investment in children’s and documentary content; and masking of actual investment due to increasingly murky reporting. In real terms, it is expenditure on Sport in an Olympic year that hides the overall decline and masks the abject failure of government policy that sits behind this,” said SPA CEO Matthew Deaner.

“Critical in the data is a decline in reported program commissioning by 18% in 2023-24 (55) compared to 2022-23 (67).

“These delayed figures issued a minute before midnight, are unverified and continue to inaccurately portray the actual investment made by SVOD services given that up to half of the money being reported comes from external sources including producer, distributor and Government contributions.

“What cannot be masked here, however, is that expenditure on children’s drama, children’s non-drama and documentary programs decreased to their lowest levels since reporting started in 2019–20.

“The Australian screen stories are not getting a fair go from streaming platforms. Until the Australian Government puts some local content rules in place, it will continue to be all take and no give for Australian audiences and jobs.

“This issue has been on the Government’s ‘to-do’ list for the past two years, and while we wait and the industry declines, thousands of Australians lose their jobs and thousands of Australian children grow up on a diet of primarily American culture, not their own,” said Deaner.