Screen Producers Australia has issued a very critical response to a report released last week by the Australian Communications and Media Authority on the level of domestic content investment by Aussie commercial nets in 2023/2024.

There’s not enough commercial funding going towards “culturally significant genres” like scripted drama, says SPA, which calls this just one symptom of a larger “market failure” in Australian content investment. 

This is in spite of ACMA’s data showing that spending on children’s drama went from  zero dollars in 2022/2023 to US$1.1 million (AUD$1.75 million) in 2023/2024. While this is one of the “marginal gains” in the report, SPA noted that it still represents a drastic decline from pre-pandemic spending—putting the collapse at 98% since 2018/2019.

“These figures continue a pattern we’ve warned about for years,”said SPA CEO Matthew Deaner. “The slight increase in children’s drama investment this year is statistically meaningless. Both adult and kids drama remain at unsustainably low levels. We cannot expect Australian stories to thrive without real structural change.”

It’s essential that Australia’s government “restore balance in a market that’s now skewed almost entirely toward live sport and low-cost formats,” Deaner added, pushing for streamer regulation and a reinvestment in national broadcasters.

SPA proposed a number of key policy interventions, from increased ABC/SBS funding for indie kids content, to revenue-linked local content investment obligations for SVOD platforms.

Going forward, there’s also a need for more expansive reporting on Australia’s screen sector spending, with Deaner calling for “like-for-like expenditure data” across all platforms including streamers and pubcasters. “Only then can we properly assess who is contributing to Australian storytelling and who isn’t.”