Government passes bill reducing local drama requirements for broadcasters

June 23, 2021 6:16

The Australian Parliament has passed the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (2021 Measures No. 1) Bill 2021, which will provide community television stations in Melbourne and Adelaide with a further three years to transition to online delivery and halve the annual expenditure requirement for Australian drama programming from 10% to 5%.

The amendment bill will also simplify rules to subscription television captioning arrangements, clarifies the intent of grandfathering arrangements for licence area populations made by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), and extends the timeframe for ACMA to implement grants under the Regional and Small Publishers Innovation Fund beyond 30 June 2021.

“These measures reflect the government’s approach to simpler, more transparent and more flexible legislation in broadcasting regulation,” Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts, Paul Fletcher said.

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Olivia Kruimel

Olivia Kruimel was the managing editor at Mumbrella. She has more than 15 years of experience in journalism, communications and marketing. Her journalism career began at Fairfax Media (now part of Nine) and includes various B2B publications such as B&T, Travel Today and ALB. As a marketer Olivia has worked for Standard Chartered and various global law firms.